


marriage of (in)convenience

by Sixthlight



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: ...does it count as Ruritanian if it's (what in our world is) Italy?, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Family Drama, Identity Porn, M/M, Meet the Family, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Politics, Ruritanian, Sibling Death, anyway the mood is Princess Diaries x Are Modern Monarchies A Good Idea Actually, cameos from the Usual Suspects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28066215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: To be fair, Joe did know there were some things Nicky wasn’t quite telling him. But it didn’t matter to him who Nicky’s ancestors had been. What mattered was Nicky, who was kind, and thoughtful, and relentlessly committed to doing the right thing, including his share of the dishes. Really, what else did you need to know that someone was a keeper?
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 130
Kudos: 1089





	1. marriage of (in)convenience

Booker liked to remind Joe, for years afterward, that he probably should have thought harder about why Nicky had proposed to him so quickly.

Joe’s defense – and he was willing to admit that it wasn’t great – was that at the time, it hadn’t seemed _that_ rushed. The first time they’d met had been four years before that, a holiday romance in Malta that had set Joe’s standards for men impossibly high ever after. If he could have found a way to make it work then, he would have. But Nicky had been studying medicine in Pavia, and Joe had been about to start his new job as an art authenticator in Amsterdam. So they’d agreed to keep in touch, and then Nicky just…hadn’t, and Joe had made himself stop waiting and got on with his life. But every guy he’d dated (or not dated) after that had been held to the Nicky standard, and all of them had been found wanting.

“I can’t believe he was _that_ wonderful,” his sister Noor had said, three and a half years later. “You knew him for two weeks.”

“Sometimes you just know,” Joe said.

“Because you spent those two weeks in deep philosophical discussion about what you wanted out of life?”

“You’d be surprised, actually.” To be fair – and Joe absolutely wasn’t telling Noor this – a high percentage of those two weeks had been spent in bed, or out of bed engaged in activities usually associated with bed. But the thing about Nicky was that it had been just as easy to talk to him, about anything and everything, as it had been to sleep with him. Joe had _liked_ him, had wanted to keep talking to him, maybe forever. That was why it had been so crushing when Nicky – who’d been, in retrospect, a little cagey about specific personal details – had never replied to any of his messages, once they’d farewelled each other.

Then, nearly four years later, they’d recollided in Amsterdam in the most literal way. Joe had been kicking a ball around at the park with a couple of his friends, Booker who he’d known forever and Nile who was new at work, and next minute he’d been on the ground because some _complete idiot_ who shouldn’t be allowed to touch a bicycle had knocked him over. Which he announced, at the top of his lungs, because everything fucking _hurt_.

The complete idiot with the bicycle said something very fast in an Italian dialect Joe couldn’t make out, and then switched to Dutch. He had knelt down beside Joe, the bike discarded. Joe seethed some more as he touched his face and confirmed that he _was_ bleeding. “Sorry, I’m a doctor, let me – we’re definitely going to need a bandage for your forehead – Holy Mary Mother of God. Joe?”

“Wait, how do you know my – _Nicky_?” Joe said, finally taking in who had hit him. The intervening years had been kind to Nicky; he was broader across the shoulders, and he’d grown into his nose a little more, not that he’d been anything less than attractive four years ago. Joe reached out to touch his face without thinking about it, and jerked his hand back when he realised he’d just smeared blood on Nicky’s cheek.

“It’s not serious, but head wounds, you know,” Nicky said. “It would help if you lay back down.”

Joe was experiencing a very complex mixture of emotions swinging between _you idiot_ and wanting to kiss him. Fortunately, Booker and Nile were there to pick up the yelling for him.

“What the hell,” Booker was saying.

“Joe, you need to lie down, you’re bleeding everywhere,” Nile said briskly, in English. “There’s a pharmacy not too far away, let me go grab a first aid kit.”

“That would be very helpful, thank you,” Nicky told her, also in English but more heavily accented than his Dutch, ignoring Booker entirely. He pushed at Joe’s shoulders. Joe lay back down on the grass.

“Jesus, there’s blood everywhere,” Booker said.

“Head wound,” Nicky explained. “Are you a friend of Joe’s?”

“You _know_ him?”

“We met in Malta a few years ago.”

“Wait – _you’re_ the famous Nicky?”

“I am famous?” Nicky raised his eyebrows, looking down at Joe, as he efficiently checked his arms and legs for – whatever doctors checked for when they’d just knocked you over with a bicycle. Joe was letting him, but only because it seemed easier than trying to stop him.

“You may have left an impression,” Joe said. “And now you owe me _two_ drinks.”

“Two?”

“One for ghosting me, one for nearly killing me.”

Nicky _tsked_. “You are not nearly killed. Not even close. But…” He gave Joe a crooked, close-mouthed smile, and Joe nearly forgot how to breathe. “I did not expect to see you here, and I would _love_ to buy you a drink. Or two.”

“Uh…good,” Joe said, and smiled back, only a little bit dopey. There’d been some bandaging and a detour to a café and Nicky explaining that he was working here now and trying to learn to ride a bike, which he’d never done. Of course Joe had offered to teach him – he’d just finished helping Nile, who had upgraded to getting her groceries by bike now (Joe was so proud). Booker had said that on the balance he thought Joe _had_ to because the man was clearly a public menace.

One thing had led to another, and Joe had woken up the next morning wrapped around Nicky and thought: _I can’t let him get away a second time_.

They’d slotted into each other’s lives almost effortlessly. Nicky was living in the city now, doing his residency in emergency medicine. Joe was doing the same job he’d been headed to when he left Malta, working as an authenticator and valuer for an art auction house. Booker had been working there when he’d started, though he’d now moved on to a museum. Nile had started just this year, after finishing her degree. Joe wasn’t totally keen on the amount of time he had to spend around very rich people who didn’t appreciate even a little bit the artistic value of the things they had, but it paid enough for him to do his own art on the weekends, and some of the things he got to see were _very_ cool.

“Sounds like fun,” Nicky had said. “Some of the things I get to see are very cool too. From a certain point of view.”

“Feel free to not describe them to me,” Joe had said. “Where are you staying?”

Nicky had been living with two other doctors, near the hospital. Four weeks later he’d moved into Joe’s place. They’d stepped back into what they’d had in Malta, the effortless synchrony, like no time had passed at all. Four months later, when Joe had made him coffee after a particularly hellish night shift, Nicky had breathed “Marry me,” into the cup. Joe had laughed and said “Sure.”

Nicky had held his breath, staring at him, and then said “No. I mean – I mean it. Marry me.”

“Like – _now_?” Joe had said, wrong-footed in his own kitchen.

“Well – whenever it can happen, I don’t know what the laws are here,” Nicky had said. “But yes.”

“Yes,” Joe had replied instantly, because he still felt what he’d felt in the park: that immediate urge to make sure that this time, Nicky didn’t get away. “Yes.”

Nicky had smiled at him like the sun coming up, a big slow grin that took over his whole face and Joe saw too rarely, and Joe had known, absolutely, that this was the right thing for him, for them.

The wedding had been small: Joe’s family were there, but Nicky – Joe had known this, sort of, but not thought about it too hard – wasn’t really in touch with his.

“It’s…a long story,” he said. “I’d invite my brother Marco but he lives in New York, and I don’t think he could make it.”

“You can tell me about it, when you’re ready,” Joe said, taking both of Nicky’s hands in his.

He knew some things: that Nicky had four older siblings, three of them half-siblings, that he’d grown up in Genoa, a small principality that had never been absorbed into unified Italy, that he didn’t get on with his family, for unspecified reasons that Joe didn’t have to guess very hard at. You couldn’t be queer, even in the Netherlands, even now, and not know _someone_ with that story. 

“Thank you,” Nicky said, squeezing Joe’s hands like they were a lifeline. “I will be, one day, I promise.”

“What if he’s just marrying you for your money?” Booker had asked, at the time.

“Oh, yes, my untold riches,” Joe had scoffed. His job didn’t pay that well, and his parents were a university lecturer and a businesswoman who’d been a politician for a while; not exactly working-class, but not exactly what you’d call marrying for money for a medical professional, either.

“You’ve paid off your student loan already, haven’t you? That’s a really good start,” said Nile, which was an _extremely_ American thing to say.

“He’s not hard up for money,” Joe said. “I always have to argue to get him to split the bill. It’s definitely not that.”

“Worth thinking about,” Booker had shrugged, but ultimately conceded the point.

To be fair, Joe did know there were some things Nicky _wasn’t_ quite telling him. It wasn’t just his insistence on paying more than his fair share of the bills. He was unconcerned about them in a way that you could _only_ be if you’d never had to worry about it in your life. And he’d once or twice let slip a comment about the Dutch royal family that made it very clear he’d met some of them personally, and hadn’t considered it a notable occasion.

Joe’s private bet was that Nicky’s family were some sort of minor Genoese nobility who were particularly snobbish about their youngest son being gay and – as far as Joe could tell – genuinely happier dealing with car crash victims than doing…whatever it was that minor nobility did. But as far as Joe was concerned, the whole thing was a joke anyway. It didn’t matter to him who Nicky’s ancestors had been. What mattered was Nicky, who was kind, and thoughtful, and relentlessly committed to doing the right thing, including his share of the dishes. Really, what else did you need to know that someone was a keeper?

So they got married, and their friends and family forgave them the short notice, and they went to Malta for a week’s honeymoon. It was that first magical two weeks all over again, but this time, when Joe lay next to Nicky on the last night, sweaty and satisfied and tracing Nicky’s cheekbones with his fingertips, he knew that Nicky would be on the plane home with him the next day. It was _better_ than that first two weeks.

“You’ve still got a little bit of a scar, here,” Nicky said, tapping lightly on Joe’s forehead. “It hasn’t quite faded.”

“You left your mark on me.” Joe leaned in and kissed him. “I don’t mind.”

“I am so very grateful to have met you,” Nicky whispered against his mouth, and kissed him back, and then they ended up going another round. Between Nicky’s shifts and Joe’s work travel they didn’t get a lot of weeks like this. It was worth savoring every moment.

*

Having had that thought, Joe reflected grumpily one Monday less than a month later, was definitely the reason for the assignment he’d just been given: two weeks in Genoa, doing some discreet on-site valuations for a client that wasn’t being named, which probably meant it was the royal family. The list of paintings he’d be looking at was enticing. The thought of dealing with the level of protocol around them wasn’t, but then: that was the job.

It helped Joe’s temper that Nile was coming as well, and was genuinely excited – she’d never been to Genoa.

“Neither have I,” Joe told her.

“But I thought Nicky was from there?”

“He is. But we met in Malta, and then here, and he told me he hasn’t been back for a long while now. I think it’s not somewhere he’s comfortable.”

“That’s a shame,” Nile said, sincerely. Joe knew she missed her mother and brother and extended family in the US, and talked to them every week. “Guess he won’t want to tag along, then.”

“There’s no way he’d get leave again this soon,” Joe said regretfully. “But maybe we’ll go there together one day.”

“Well, you’ll excuse me, I need to spend some quality time with Duolingo,” said Nile.

“Ligurian is pretty different from standard Italian, you know.”

“I have to start _somewhere_ , Mr I-grew-up-speaking-five-languages.”

“Six,” Joe said, just to annoy her, even though ‘speaking’ was strong for his knowledge of Kabyle. Nile rolled her eyes.

Nicky was on night shifts this week, extended penance for the honeymoon, so Joe only had five minutes to tell him about the trip before he had to leave. But as soon as Joe said _Genoa_ , he froze.

“Do you have to?”

“Yes.” Joe frowned at him. “Is there some reason I shouldn’t?”

“No, of course not,” Nicky said, and continued packing his bag. Then, just as he was about to walk out the door, he stopped and turned and said “But – the thing is – I would prefer that you didn’t.”

“Go to Genoa?”

Nicky nodded, clutching the strap on his messenger bag so hard his knuckles were white.

Joe threw up his hands. “Nicky! Nicky, babe, I love you, but I can’t turn down a work assignment for that. I need a reason. Please.”

Nicky opened his mouth, and hesitated a long moment. “I…can’t give you one right now.”

“And why not?”

Nicky shook his head convulsively, and then walked out the door. Joe spent the evening walking around the house being annoyed by random objects. This was the first real disagreement they’d had since the wedding, and it was so stupid. Nicky wanted to ban him from his _entire home city_? It wasn’t like Joe was going for fun. He’d be locked up in windowless rooms trying not to breathe on paintings worth stupid amounts of money, while the people who worked for the people who worked for the people who owned them scowled at him. Or he’d be wiped out in a hotel room, writing up notes. Whatever it was Nicky didn’t want him to see in Genoa, he wasn’t going to see it.

He was nearly asleep when Nicky texted him.

_I’m sorry I walked out. I just hoped that when you went to Genoa, it would be with me, and I could explain things._

_I get that_ , Joe texted back. _But it’s like – I know it’s not the same thing – you couldn’t just refuse to treat someone because I said I didn’t want you to._

 _It is not at all the same thing_ , and Joe could hear the terseness in Nicky’s voice, _but I understand. When do you have to leave?_

_Thursday._

_Too soon._

Joe sent back _I know,_ and a rainbow string of heart emojis. Nicky woke him up the next morning with a kiss on the forehead. He was still dressed; his shift had ended at seven am, Joe remembered.

“We have to talk when you come back,” was the first thing he said. “About…some things. But go to Genoa first.”

“There’s nothing you could tell me that would change how I feel about you, my heart,” Joe said, seriously, cupping a hand around the back of Nicky’s neck so their foreheads were touching. “I know who you are, in yourself. That’s what I care about. Whoever your family are there, or whatever they do, or whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.”

“Nothing, hmm,” Nicky said. Joe could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. “What if I said, let’s see, that I thought Clarence Seedorf was overrated as a player –”

Joe pushed him off the bed. Nicky was laughing as he hit the floor. It wasn’t a bad way to start the day.

*

Genoa was a long day away by train, but Joe preferred it immensely to dealing with airport security, and luckily his boss let him push on that sort of thing. Nile, after six years in Europe, was still enraptured by the train system and didn’t mind either. They both did paperwork on the way, and got into Genoa in the evening, reasonably relaxed. It was, Joe was willing to admit, a beautiful city, caught between the mountains and the sea. Unlike Monaco, it had retained a lot more land than the city itself, so the economy revolved less around tourism and gambling and more around shipbuilding and specialty agriculture. In Joe’s opinion, it made it much nicer.

The exact client still wasn’t clear – and might never be to Joe and Nile – but the paintings they were there to assess were at the royal palace, so Joe hadn’t been too wrong there. The curator explained that they were being donated to a museum, and a fair assessment of the value was needed for tax purposes. Joe and Nile exchanged a look while the curator wasn’t looking at them. Rich people – they already had all the money in the world and then they wanted to make sure they got their due when they gave a fraction of it away.

As predicted, they spent the day in a windowless room, trying not to breathe. Authentication and valuation was a slow process. They took turns at examining, while the other took notes. When they finally got out into the cooling evening air, Joe drew in a deep breath.

“It’s like that, isn’t it,” said Nile. “Room service, or shall we find somewhere to eat?”

“Let’s not resort to room service on the first night,” Joe said. “Besides, you need to practice your Italian, don’t you?”

Nile charmingly stumbled her way through ordering for both of them. Joe texted Nicky a photo of him, and the view of the ocean.

_Nice city. Not as nice as you._

The food came, and Joe put his phone down, but there was still no answer when they were done eating. Then Joe remembered that of course Nicky was on shift; he’d probably reply in the morning.

*

The next morning, however, there was no reply. Worse, Joe was woken by a call from the palace. Their services would not be required today, due to other events.

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure what that means,” Joe said. “What about tomorrow?”

“We’ll let you know when you’re needed. Please don’t leave the city.”

“Understood,” Joe said, and immediately emailed his boss. He went down to the hotel breakfast room to be greeted by Nile waving a newspaper at him.

“Duolingo has _definitely_ not got me far enough along to read this, but I think I can get the gist. Has someone in the royal family died?”

“Shit, yeah,” Joe said, taking it. “If you hit the buffet for me, I’ll tell you the important stuff.”

“On it,” Nile said, and brought him back coffee and gloriously mediocre hotel eggs and toast. “All the meat was pork, sorry.”

“I’ll cope. It looks like the crown prince has died, suddenly. That explains why they don’t want us at the palace this morning.”

“He doesn’t look that old,” Nile commented, wrinkling her nose at the picture taking up most of the front page.

“He wasn’t. Mid-forties.” Joe turned a page. “Huh, this is interesting; apparently it creates a bit of a constitutional crisis, because he only had a daughter, and they kept Salic law in the post-Congress of Vienna constitution because of some French nobles they wanted to keep out of the succession. No women inheriting, or inheriting through the female line. Which means the next in line might be the two youngest princes, instead of his daughter or one of his sister’s sons...there’ll have to be an announcement by the royal family, and parliamentary approval. What a mess.”

“I didn’t understand the first half of that, but what I get is that it’s their fault, for having monarchs, and stupid rules about them.” Nile wasn’t very sympathetic. “Do you think we’ll get to finish the job at all?”

“Depends,” Joe said. “We’re not that cheap to have kicking our heels, but I suppose they can afford it. Want to get out and walk around a bit this morning?”

“Hell yes,” Nile agreed, and so that was what they did. Nicky still hadn’t texted Joe back. Joe tried texting him again, telling him what had happened this morning. When there was still no response, feeling a bit guilty but not enough to not do it, he texted Nicky’s colleague Celeste.

She replied _He called in sick or something, I don’t know the details. And you haven’t heard from him?_

Joe showed the text to Nile. They were walking along the waterfront, eating gelato.

“That doesn’t seem like Nicky,” Nile said.

“No, it doesn.” Joe chewed on a thumbnail. “I could ask Noor to go and knock on our door after work, make sure he’s alright…”

“Give it until this evening,” Nile suggested. “Maybe he had a migraine and had to sleep it off, or something. He called in, so it’s not like he’s vanished.”

“He doesn’t get migraines,” Joe said, but it occurred to him with a sickening feeling that maybe that wasn’t true; maybe Nicky did; he’d known him for not even six months, if you added it all up. He knew there were some things Nicky didn’t tell him. For the first time, that made him worried.

He tossed the rest of his gelato, no longer in the mood. Nile suggested they go to a museum, the one that was going to receive the paintings. Joe agreed, mostly because it felt like something associated with work, and that was what they were here for. He wasn’t going to enjoy himself just wandering around like a tourist all day.

On the way to the museum, his phone rang. It was Nicky. Joe answered it at once.

“Nicky!” He saw Nile’s face light up. “I texted Celeste and she said you called in sick. Are you all right? Do I need to come home? What –”

Nicky laughed, a dry and slightly bitter sound. “No, no, you definitely don’t. I’m…I’m in Genoa.”

“What?” Joe stopped, and looked around, as if Nicky might be trailing them. “Where? Here? Why?”

“I – I promised you an explanation,” Nicky said, “and now I think I have to give it to you. Could you…could you come back to the hotel?”

“Right away,” Joe said, and told Nile what was happening. It was only when they were walking in the door that he remembered he hadn’t told Nicky which hotel he was staying at. He looked around the lobby; Nicky wasn’t there. The only person in the lobby apart from staff was a tall man in a not-quite-well-fitting suit that said _security_. Joe knew the type very well. When he saw Joe and Nile, he walked over to them.

“You’re wanted at the palace,” he said, no greeting. “Come this way.”

“But they called and said we couldn’t keep working today,” Nile objected. “Because of the prince dying, and I guess whatever they’re doing for the funeral or – whatever.”

“If they’ve changed their mind, that’s fine,” Joe said. “We’re just confused.”

The man frowned, and shook his head. “Working?”

“On the paintings,” Joe said. “We’re the authenticators. From the auction house.”

He just stared at them, and then said “You’re Yusuf al-Kaysani, yes?”

“That’s right.” Joe was feeling uneasy now. “And this is Nile Freeman, and you are…”

“Palace security,” he said tersely. “If you’ll just –”

“I’m just going to call the curator,” Joe said, “ _one_ minute –” but then his phone rang again, and it was Nicky, again.

“Joe. Joe, are you at the hotel? I can’t get there. Someone’s going to pick you up. He might be a bit – it’s fine, I promise, just go with him, okay?”

“What the _fuck_ , Nicky,” Joe said. “Look, they’ve decided they want us back at the palace after all –”

“It’s not about the paintings, Joe,” Nicky said, talking over him. “It’s – I can’t –” He swore under his breath. “Please just…I’ll explain when you get here.” A pause; Joe could hear him talking to someone. “Your escort’s name is Keane, if that helps.”

Joe lowered the phone. “Hey. Yeah, you. What’s your name?”

“Keane,” the man sighed, sounding like someone whose job was not going the way he wanted it to. Someone _with a gun_. Joe didn’t like that very much.

“Alright,” Joe said, and put the phone back to his ear. “Nicky, I’ll…see you soon, I guess.”

“You will. I love you,” Nicky said. Joe said “Bye, babe,” and hung up. He didn’t know what was going on, exactly, but he could put a few of the pieces together: Nicky had some sort of connection to the royal family. Joe felt obscurely upset. This wasn’t the way he would have wanted to find out.

*

Keane loaded Joe into the back of a car with tinted windows. Joe only went with it because Nicky had said he should; Nile only went with it because he told her it was fine.

“Do you know something I don’t?” she demanded, following them out of the hotel. “Because what the hell has Nicky got to do with this job?”

“I – have an idea, but…” Joe trailed off. “Call work and let them know what’s happening, okay? And…I’ll be in touch.”

“Okay,” Nile said, unhappily, and stood there chewing her lip as the driver opened the car door for Joe.

It was a very short ride to the palace. The car door got opened for him at the other end as well, and he was politely ushered not down to the basement where they had worked yesterday, or into the public spaces, but around the back, into what was clearly private space. Joe’s anxiety grew. It wasn’t helped by the fact that he wasn’t dressed for this. Thinking they had the morning off, they’d left their work clothes in their hotel rooms. Joe was in slacks and a linen shirt which had wrinkled as soon as he’d put it on; fine for wandering around eating gelato, not fine for a palace, unless you were on a tour. Joe didn’t think he was going on a tour.

Finally he was shown into a room which could pass for a normal very wealthy person’s living room if you squinted and ignored all the priceless art. Joe was, constitutionally, not someone who could do that. But the only thing he really had eyes for was Nicky. In all the time Joe had known Nicky – and, okay, less than six months, but on the other hand they’d been _living_ together for most of that time – the only time he’d seen him in a suit was on their wedding day. In fact, he knew all the clothes Nicky owned because they both did the laundry, and the wedding suit was the only one Nicky owned. Otherwise he lived in faded t-shirts and jeans or cargo pants.

Joe didn’t recognise this suit at all. It fitted Nicky like a glove, and he wore it like he wasn’t thinking about it. His eyes were red. All of this was completely – but Joe didn’t care. He walked over and put his arms around his husband. He obviously needed it. So did Joe.

Nicky let out a shuddering breath into his shoulder. “I am very glad you’re here.”

“Hey!” said Keane the palace security guy, who was still there.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Joe said, turning to glare at him without letting go, “but I know that I’m having a very weird day and I’m glad to see my husband, is that a problem?”

Keane jerked, like Joe had said something totally unexpected. Nicky said, in a polite voice Joe had never heard him use before, which carried the expectation of total obedience, “We would like to talk, thank you, Keane.”

Keane left, just like that. Nicky sighed again, and clutched Joe tighter.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on here?” Joe prompted him.

“No, but I think I’m out of excuses.”

“You really are,” Joe said, and sat them both down on a couch that in other circumstances, a colleague of his could have been hired to value. “So…I’m listening.”

“My name isn’t really Nicolò diGenova,” Nicky began. “Well. It is. But it’s also Prince Nicolò Frederico Pietro di Genova, and my brother died last night, and that’s why I am here.” He paused. “Joe?”

“Nicky,” Joe said, very tenderly. “I’m sorry about your brother. But also. What the _fuck_.”

*

As Nicky told it, there wasn’t very much to explain. He was a prince; he was the youngest son of the ruling Prince of Genoa; he hated nearly everything about it; he had, finally, convinced his family to allow him to attend medical school and work – not quite incognito, but very nearly – in Amsterdam.

“That was because of you, you know,” he said. “When I was applying for positions – that is, I wasn’t trying to find you again, exactly. But I thought of you, and our time on Malta.”

“I assume,” Joe said, trying not to sound bitter, “that this is why you stopped replying, after then.”

“I was scared,” Nicky said, simply. He had always had a talent Joe had envied, for saying the heart of things right out, where Joe spent time grasping for metaphors. “It was the first time I – but you know that. It was the same for you. I just looked at you, that last day, and tried to imagine bringing you home. Bringing you here. And my imagination was not up to the task. So, yes, I stopped replying, because I was afraid, and I thought it was better to leave it as a beautiful memory than ruin it by…” He trailed off.

“Bringing me here,” Joe finished, gesturing around. “Where we are now.”

“I’m not who I was in Malta, that first time,” Nicky insisted. “I know what I want. And it’s totally different now, I’m out of the succession, you don’t have to worry about it. I wouldn’t have asked you to come here at all, except – you were already in the city, and you would have seen…you would have found out, the worst way. I had to tell you in person.”

“Hold on, hold on. Out of the succession? What – why does that – when did that change?”

“When, uh,” Nicky said. “When I married you.”

Joe felt his eyebrows climb to his hairline. “Do you want to explain that?”

“There’s not much to explain. You have to have the ruling Prince’s permission to marry, which I didn’t ask for. And anyway to get permission, you have to marry in the Catholic Church, which we did not, and could not. So I am supremely disqualified as an heir, aside from not wanting the job, and very pleased to be.” Nicky eyed Joe. “I feel like…you should also be pleased to hear this? I know you aren’t a fan of monarchies –”

“Is that why you proposed?” Joe said, his mouth dry. “So quickly? Because you didn’t want to be in the line of succession?”

“No!” Nicky said, but six months or no, Joe knew him. His eyes gave him away. “No, not – only that.”

Joe was still processing how to respond to that when the door opened again and someone said “Your highness, your parents want you in the blue drawing room.”

“We’ll be there in a minute,” Nicky said, in that voice again, the one Joe didn’t know and didn’t like. “Joe. I…know it’s a lot very quickly…”

“Do you want to be here?” Joe demanded. “With your family.”

“Not really, no. But I have to.”

“Then I’m with you, as long as you need me,” Joe said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not still mad.”

“I know,” Nicky said, and held Joe’s hand until he opened the door. Then he let go.

*

Joe had guessed a while back that the most likely time for him to meet any of Nicky’s family would be at something like a funeral, given the level of contact that Nicky appeared to have with them on an everyday basis (that was, none). He hadn’t imagined anything as monumentally awkward as this. Joe’s job had put him in contact with a lot of very wealthy and powerful people who wanted to be personally told about the history and value of their possessions. But none of them had been direct-line royalty, and he was painfully aware that he didn’t know how Nicky’s family were expecting him to behave. If he offended them, he wanted to be absolutely sure it was on purpose.

“Just – my father might not shake hands,” Nicky said, when Joe muttered some of this to him, as they walked through the palace. “But you know how to behave.”

“On your head be it.”

“Oh, it is already, I promise,” Nicky said, and then he was opening the door, and they were there.

Nicky’s family present in the palace – most of them summoned back hastily due to his brother’s unexpected death, and Joe hadn’t even really processed that, shit, Nicky had just lost his brother – included his parents and all his living siblings. If any of their spouses were here, they weren’t in the room right now.

“Where’s Giulia?” Nicky asked. Joe was pretty sure that was the princess who couldn’t inherit. Nicky’s niece.

“In her apartment, with some of her friends,” his mother said. “She’s still in shock. Her mother can’t be here until tomorrow.” Nicky’s oldest brother, Joe recalled from the article he’d read this morning, had been separated from his wife.

Nicky’s mother greeted Joe with a stiff smile and a stiff hug, but Joe got the sense the stiffness was more due to grief than anything else. Nicky’s sisters and brother shook hands with him, and said how pleased they were to meet him, and how shocking it was that Nicky hadn’t invited _any_ of them to the wedding.

“He invited us,” said Nicky’s brother Marco. His father gave him a quelling look.

“We would have come,” Nicky’s oldest sister, Bernadetta, said to Nicky, sounding almost frustrated.

“It was very short notice,” Nicky said. “But thank you.”

Eventually they were all seated on couches around a coffee table; someone – a staff member, Joe supposed – came in with a coffee set that was real silver and, Joe was certain given the context, a real antique, but nobody poured themselves any.

“We need to discuss the protocol for the next few days,” Nicky’s father began. “And after, when we appoint the new heir. Before you ask, Bernadetta, Giovanna, there is no way a constitutional change would go through this Parliament, for Giulia; and besides she is only fifteen.”

“Before we start,” Nicky said, “I don’t see why you need either of us here, for the formalities. I came for all of you and for Giulia, not for any of that, and Joe was – Joe just happened to already be here. It will not be a surprise if I do not attend. I have been away for years, now. And I cannot think of a more awkward way to announce a marriage. As I am not in the line of succession any more –”

“What do you mean?” said his father.

“As has been discussed, we got married two months ago,” Nicky said, very calmly, taking Joe’s hand. “And so –”

Nicky’s parents exchanged a puzzled look.

“That doesn’t put you out of the line of succession until _I_ put you out of it, and the Parliament approves it,” his father said, very firmly. “Which I am not going to do.”

Nicky sat up very straight. “You put Marco out! He only married an American!”

Marco frowned; Joe couldn’t tell if he was upset about the reminder, or upset about the implied insult to his – Joe’s personal gaydar definitely said _wife_.

“Yes, and I thought that made my point,” his father snapped back, “but apparently it did not, and now Gianfranco is dead, and changing the law to let Giulia inherit would require changing the _constitution,_ which I just explained is not going to happen. Your marriage isn’t recognised here, so I can ignore it if I like. You’re it now, Nico, God help all of us. You’re the next in line. And I refuse to let _all_ of my sons wriggle out of their inheritance.”

“You get me with Joe,” Nicky said very flatly, “or you don’t get me at all; this is not a negotiation on that point, and you do not get to _ignore_ my marriage.”

Joe was expecting the yelling to start at that point, but it was a lot worse than that. Nicky, it turned out, had inherited his cold temper from his father. They circled each other, hissing and snapping without ever raising their voices. After five minutes Nicky’s mother got up and the others followed; Joe stood hastily as well. A woman Joe had never seen before motioned him out of the room.

“That could go on for hours,” she said, in American English. “Hi, we haven’t met; I’m Hannah.” When Joe didn’t respond, she tried again in Italian. “Hello, I’m –”

“Sorry, it’s all a bit…” Joe waved a hand, forcing himself to mentally switch languages. “Hi. I’m Joe. I’m Nicky’s husband.”

“Hannah,” she said. She was white, with dark hair in a neat updo, and obviously pregnant. “I’m married to Marco. Sorry we couldn’t make it to the wedding; Nicky invited us, but it was the middle of the semester.”

“It was very short notice,” Joe said. “Was, uh. Was there this much…when you got married?”

“Oh, I wasn’t there. Marco came home and asked for permission to marry me, and he – the Prince – said no when I said I wouldn’t convert, and then – anyway, that’s why we stayed in New York.”

“Nicky didn’t tell me who he _was._ ”

Hannah made a face. “So when did you…”

“About five hours ago.”

“Oh, _shit_ ,” she said, heartfelt. “That’s a lot to take in.”

Bernadetta, who was obviously listening in, shook her head.

“Yeah,” Joe said. “No kidding.”

*

The upshot of all the low-voiced arguing was that Nicky and Joe were agreeing to stay at the palace.

“Are we?” Joe asked Nicky, pointedly.

“Well, you don’t have to.” Nicky wiped a hand over his face. “You can go back to the hotel. Nobody – nobody knows you’re here, or expects you to be here. But I have to stay. In Genoa, I can’t just pretend to be…I can’t just do what I like. It will be noticed.” His whole body was tense, like it was when he came home after a patient had died.

“I’m not leaving you alone here,” Joe said.

Nicky squeezed his hand, so tightly it hurt. “I’ll have someone take care of your things.”

Then Joe had to do the surreal, mundane tasks the situation required: calling Nile and telling her an edited version of what had happened, calling his work and telling him that he needed to take bereavement leave because of a death in his husband’s family, and that they needed to talk about the contract, because he had discovered a conflict of interest. He didn’t want to tell them but ethically he couldn’t not. Fortunately his boss didn’t ask questions after he mentioned bereavement leave, just told him to call back after the funeral and they’d sort it out.

Nile was much more difficult to deal with, because he had to tell her the whole truth.

“He _what now_ ,” she said, her voice getting higher pitched on every syllable. “Joe! You’re fucking kidding!”

“I am absolutely not. Google Prince Nicolò of Genoa.”

“I am. One second.” There was a pause, and an indrawn breath. “Holy shit, Joe, you’re not kidding. And you didn’t know?”

“I knew he wasn’t exactly working-class,” Joe said, “but _this_? No. I just thought he’d left it behind, whatever ‘it’ was.” _It_ was, of course, the palace he was standing in.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Nile asked.

“You’re a great friend, but no, not right now. I guess…enjoy your time here, until work sort out what’s happening. I’m sorry to leave you in the lurch like this.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not blaming _you_.” Nile snorted. “Tell Nicky he owes _all_ of us apologies and explanations for this prince in disguise bullshit.”

“Oh, I will,” Joe promised her, and they said their goodbyes.

The funeral was scheduled for four days from now, but there were going to be several other events Nicky was expected to attend before that. Nicky’s father had made it very clear that he expected public family unity, in these circumstances. Nicky had pointed out that either that meant leaving Joe out of things, or derailing the funeral news with his previously unannounced marriage. His father had said that this was Nicky’s problem, since he had put himself in that situation, and he and Joe could sort it out between themselves. It had been clear he expected that Joe would not want to stay, and the question could be put off.

“I – it’s up to you,” Nicky said. “You should do what you feel comfortable with; I can handle my family. And we will get this whole succession nonsense sorted out, I promise. My father doesn’t want me to inherit, not really. He’ll have to put Marco back in. It will be awkward, but we’ve survived worse.” He got up and began to pace, getting into the swing of it.

“This is why I didn’t want to come home. I knew where I wanted to be, and I knew what I wanted to do, and it wasn’t here. And marrying you was going to be the end of it. There was no _way_ my father was going to move himself to change the rules for me. I was _done_.”

“My heart,” Joe said, deliberately unscrewing his face from the skeptical expression it had wound into, entirely without his permission. “Did you think this was, what, a fairytale, where you could kiss me and _stop_ being a prince?”

“Well….” Nicky spread his hands. “Not…exactly like that?”

“I’m not saying that’s ridiculous, but…” Joe sighed. “It is a little ridiculous. And it wasn’t fair to _me_.”

Nicky looked so guilt-stricken at this that Joe almost wanted to comfort him, but not enough to actually do it, because he _deserved_ to look guilt-stricken. It hadn’t been fair. It wasn’t fair. Joe wasn’t a get out of jail free card. He had an entire life of his own that this revelation was rapidly oversetting.

It would be easier, in some tiny portion of his heart, if he could believe that it had happened like this because Nicky didn’t really love him, had just found him convenient, or a sufficiently rebellious choice: but he didn’t think those things, not for a second. Nicky loved him, and Nicky had chosen him, and Nicky had believed whole-heartedly that he could put all of this behind him for Joe, that it would be an amusing anecdote about something that didn’t matter anymore. _Joe_ had believed that, when he had thought that Nicky was from some idly rich minor noble family. He’d known they came from different places and he’d been willing to meet in the middle.

It was the scale of the gap that he’d misjudged. And that, apparently, Nicky had as well.

*

Joe’s things turned up in the apartment – princes didn’t have _rooms_ , they had _apartments_ – he and Nicky had been put into at the palace, neatly unpacked and put away, before he and Nicky even got there.

“I told you I’d ask someone,” Nicky said.

“They went through my stuff!”

“Yes, they – right.” Nicky looked around, as if taking the bedroom in. It wasn’t as ornamental as the more public spaces, but it was still unmistakably a room in a palace. “This is all very difficult for you, I realise. I never thought you’d have to deal with…” He waved a hand. “This.”

“I can tell.” Joe sat down on the bed. It was, ironically, going to be a tight fit for two tall-ish adult men. He wondered if that was some sort of subtle signal or whether this was just Nicky’s home here, and Nicky had never bothered to ask for a larger one because he’d never thought he’d live here with someone. More likely the latter than the former.

Nicky looked at his phone. “My sisters and brothers – brother – want to eat dinner together, later. Will you be ready for that?”

“Is anybody going to make fun of me for not knowing which fork to use?”

“It’s not going to be that fancy. Just family. And I’m not going to let you be in that sort of situation, ever.” Nicky’s jaw was set.

“So I don’t need to change, either?” He gestured down at his working-trip-day-off outfit. It was, frankly, more formal than Nicky ever was when he wasn’t in a palace, but it definitely wasn’t anything next to Nicky’s clearly tailored suit.

Nicky came over and kissed him on the forehead. “There is nothing wrong with you the way you are.”

“Look,” Joe said, torn between feeling loved and cared for and simmering resentment at the whole situation, “I don’t – I think that ninety percent of this is bullshit. Which I know you know. But I don’t want to make life difficult for you, either. I can play along however you need me to for a few days.” He grinned. “If you _want_ me to be difficult, that’s on the table, too.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Nicky said, a little darkly. “But for tonight…I would actually like it if you met my siblings properly. They aren’t – it’s not – I like them. More now we’re adults. And Marco’s wife is very sensible, and Giovanna’s husband has…better birth than brains, but he admires her very much, which is as it should be.”

“I think I can stretch to dinner with your family, then,” Joe allowed. “What about your parents?”

Nicky shook his head. “The point is for us to have time to talk, and them to have time to talk. Everybody is still…in shock, I think, and my father especially does not like to be vulnerable in front of anybody. Not even his children. Perhaps _especially_ his children.”

“The paper said,” Joe said cautiously, “that it was unexpected. Your brother.”

“Completely,” Nicky said. “He was forty five. He was very healthy – competed in dressage in the Olympics, several times. I know my father was hoping he might have other children – a son, given the inheritance laws. It was…” He shook his head again. “In the emergency room, I see all sorts of people whose lives get turned upside down by random events. They never think it will be them. I never thought – but nobody ever does, do they?”

His hands were starting to shake. Joe pulled him down onto the bed, and he cried for a little while, quiet deep sobs.

“I didn’t even like him very much,” he said into Joe’s neck, later. “And now you _are_ going to have to change this shirt, it’s a mess.”

“I resent, very much, this elaborate charade you apparently grew up trapped in,” Joe said. “But I don’t, for a second, resent being here for _you_ , my heart.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

“Yeah you do,” Joe said, and he meant it; he wouldn’t be here at all if he didn’t.

*

Dinner was much less formal than Joe had been fearing, though as the evening went on the siblings all got further and further away from Italian as Joe knew it, and he had to work to keep up. Luckily he wasn’t the only one; there was Hannah, of course, and Giovanna’s husband Matthieu, who was French and apparently somehow related to the Belgian royal family. Nicky had perhaps been a little cruel. Matthieu wasn’t _stupid,_ he just didn’t seem particularly intellectual. Giovanna, on the other hand, had a doctorate in ecology. When Joe asked if she was still doing research, she said no, she was mostly involved through the university board these days.

That was the common factor for all of Nicky’s siblings. They were perfectly nice people and probably competent enough, but instead of _doing_ things, they were all on boards and sponsors for charities and things like that. Marco’s wife Hannah did lecture part-time, but admitted quite cheerfully that she probably would have packed that in for Wall Street (she had studied physics, which apparently made you very hireable on Wall Street) if she hadn’t married Marco. All of them seemed fascinated and mildly disturbed by Nicky’s job.

“What sort of things are you dealing with?” asked Bernadetta, the eldest there – now the eldest living. “People being shot, or…”

Nicky laughed. “No. Mostly accidents, vehicles or bicycles or just bad luck at home or work, or sometimes people who did not realise they were ill, or were too stubborn to see a doctor, or mentally unwell or disconnected from the support they needed. I’ve never had to treat a gunshot wound.”

“That’s not true,” Joe said. “Once you came home and said you’d got someone who’d been shot in the foot –”

“Yes, but that was a police training accident, and I didn’t treat him. I just thought you’d think it was funny.”

“I did think it was funny.” Joe decided this was a good time to pull out the bicycle story. “Speaking of funny emergencies, has Nicky told you how we met the second time?”

“No,” Giovanna said, leaning forward, and Joe recounted the entire bicycle incident, finishing with “but don’t worry; he’s fully qualified to ride a bicycle now. He even does the shopping with one. I’m so proud of him.”

“I’m just trying to imagine you covered in blood, Nico,” Marco said. “I can’t see it.”

“Well, it happens on about a daily basis,” Nicky said, “when I’m not getting thrown up on. The thing with emergency medicine is that it is very exciting, very disgusting, or very boring. There’s really no in between.”

“And you were going to spend the rest of your life doing this?” Bernadetta asked, putting down her fork. There had only been one knife and fork, despite Joe’s fears, but the table had been set, and not by anybody who was eating. It was a weird mix of eating in a restaurant and eating at somebody else’s house.

“I _am_ going to spend the rest of my life doing this,” Nicky said, sitting up very straight; it left him looking down at her.

“No, you’re not, Nico.” She said it very matter-of-factly. “They won’t change the constitution, and you know why? Because that asshole Stefano is leader of the main opposition party. So it won’t be Giulia or me or Giovanna or Giovanna’s boy, and Papa isn’t going to _reverse_ what he did with Marco, because that would be even more of a mess. So it’s you.”

“Stefano is –” Nicky scowled in the way that said he was swearing in his head. “Since when?”

“Since last election. You need to come back here more.”

“I like Amsterdam,” Nicky said, “and anyway, where’s Daniela?”

“Our place in Croatia,” said Bernadetta. “She’s too sensible to want to get involved in everything that’s going to happen.”

“Sorry,” Joe interjected. “Daniela is…”

“My partner,” said Bernadetta. “We’re not married, and she’s not officially part of the family. She didn’t want to do the whole _first_ thing.”

“Bernadetta,” Nicky hissed, in a way Joe recognised from his own younger siblings: half-pleading, half-warning.

“First gay marriage, you mean,” Joe said, keeping his tone even. “Come on, it can’t be that big a deal. Surely someone in your…circles…has.” He was coming up blank, but he didn’t exactly follow the goings-on of modern royalty. He barely remembered who was in the royal family of his own country, most days. There were a lot of them.

“Yes, great-grandchildren and third cousins,” said Bernadetta. “Not the child of a reigning monarch. And certainly not an heir.”

Joe met Nicky’s eyes. Nicky was staring mutinously at his sister. “I’m not going to be the heir.”

“You want it to be Stefano?”

Giovanna, Matthieu, Marco, and Hannah _all_ made groaning noises at the name.

“I’m _not_.”

“All I am saying is,” she went on, horribly reasonable, “that you need to be prepared.”

“So, uh, Joe,” Marco said, very loudly, into the silence. “Do you follow football at all?”

*

Joe was not a morning person, which was sometimes a poor fit with someone who worked shifts, but on average only half the time, so good enough. This morning he was woken up by Nicky, who was going through his clothes, which had all been ironed and hung up. The one small mercy, as far as Joe was concerned, was that since this had been a solo work trip there hadn’t been anything _horrendously_ embarrassing for some innocent palace staffer to find.

“What are you doing?” he asked Nicky, knuckling at his eyes. Eight am; what a horrible hour of the day. The bright Mediterranean sunshine streaming in the window was not helping.

“Picking you a suit,” Nicky said. “I just got our schedule; the Prime Minister wants to meet with us.”

“You mean _you_ ,” Joe said, feeling panic start to rise. “ _Your_ Prime Minister –”

“My father’s Prime Minister.”

“The Prime Minister of _your_ country wants to meet with _you_.”

“No, both of us,” Nicky said. “So I am finding your best work suit.” He paused. “Or. You book a flight home, and we –”

“The blue one,” Joe said, getting out of bed. “My best work suit is the blue one, and I’ve met a Prime Minister before, it’ll be fine.” He was talking to himself, mostly.

“When was that?” Nicky asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“When my mother was still in Parliament,” Joe said. “A while ago now, when I was at school. We shook hands and I said what I was studying and that was about it.” He took the suit off Nicky. “Who made this schedule and why are we following it?”

“Someone in my father’s office, and because…” Nicky shrugged. “If I am here, I am on duty, as it were. Even – maybe especially under these circumstances.”

“I have a request,” Joe said, putting the suit down. “Have you showered yet?”

“No,” Nicky said; he was still in the old t-shirt he’d gone to bed in.

“Join me,” Joe said, “and I’ll put on the suit and meet your Prime Minister.”

“If you _insist_ ,” Nicky said, the corner of his mouth curving up, and they took a very long shower. It was the most fun Joe had had since he’d walked into the palace. For a few minutes, it was just him and Nicky, nothing else.

Joe had to look up who the Prime Minister of Genoa was on his phone on their way to the meeting. He was – perhaps unreasonably – a little surprised to find that it was a woman in her forties. Wikipedia told him she’d had a reputation as an activist politician, and that this was her first term as Prime Minister.

“Does she meet with members of the royal family often?” he asked Nicky, in the car. He was seeing even less of Genoa now than he had been on those first two days for work; travel with Nicky, under these circumstances, involved getting ushered into cars with tinted windows. It was a long way from teaching him how to ride a bike.

“My father, of course,” Nicky said. “And probably Gia –” he paused, and blinked. “Yes, probably Gianfranco, less often. Which is…I suspect…why she wants to speak with me.”

Joe tried to imagine Nicky as a head of state. It wasn’t – totally laughable. But it was bizarre.

The Prime Minister had a very firm handshake and a kind but brisk manner, and told them to call her Andy. Joe liked her right away. She seemed a step closer to being a normal person than anybody else he’d met in the last twenty-four hours.

“Your highness,” she said to Nicky. “And…Mr al-Kaysani?”

“Joe.”

“Yes, there’s been no title granted,” Nicky said, very seriously, in that other voice again.

“Yet,” the Prime Minister said, something sparkling around her eyes – she seemed, for some reason, pleased.

“Uh, what?” Joe turned to Nicky.

“We can talk about it later,” Nicky said, looking only a little shifty. “Andy, can I ask, why did you ask to meet with both of us? The funeral hasn’t even been held yet.”

“I know, and the first thing I wanted to offer was my condolences. But unfortunately, events move on even when we don’t want them to.” The Prime Minister leaned forward, elbows on her knees. They were sitting on two opposing couches, instead of in front of her desk. “Your highness, we need you to stay in the line of succession.”

Joe frowned. Nicky jerked, like she’d said something offensive, or inappropriate. “The succession isn’t political –”

The Prime Minister – Andy – laughed. “The succession is extremely political. The Prince still sets the tone for a lot of things. And I presume you know what happens if you insist on stepping aside.”

“I heard about Stefano, yes.”

“Hold on,” Joe said. “Shouldn’t it be…not legal for someone in the line of succession to be in your Parliament?”

“Oh, it _should_ be,” the Prime Minister agreed, leaning back and folding her arms, “but he’s not in it yet; he’s a second cousin, nobody thought we’d have to go that far. It’s a specific list approved by Parliament, we don’t just put _anybody_ on the throne. But Prince Marco got disinherited last year and now Prince Gianfranco has gone and died on us, and his Highness here was apparently actively _trying_ to get disinherited but didn’t _tell_ anybody, so legally, yes, that asshole Stefano is the next in line. Unless we change the constitution to allow Princess Giulia to inherit. Which I would do in a _hot second_ if it wasn’t for two things.”

“Let me guess,” said Nicky. “You need a two-thirds vote, and Stefano can command enough traditionalist votes to block it. But what’s the second thing?”

The Prime Minister’s eyebrows went up. “The Prince didn’t tell you?” Joe was starting to get a feel now for the distinction between _prince_ as a title, which all the royal sons had, and _the_ Prince, Nicky’s father.

“Tell me what?”

“He was going to abdicate at the end of the year. We were three-quarters of the way through planning for the transition.”

“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” Nicky said, staring at her. “He was?”

She shrugged. “He’s seventy-three; it was more than time. But yes, that’s the other thing. Even if he sticks around another year or two, Giulia’s fifteen. We can’t put a fifteen-year-old in the hot seat like that, under these conditions. He really didn’t tell you?”

“That’s not his way.” Nicky’s jaw twitched.

“This entire monarchy thing is _fucked_ , on a personal level,” Joe said. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“No disagreements here.” The Prime Minister ran a hand through her hair. “So, here we are. And here you are.”

“Just have a fucking republic, I don’t care,” Nicky said. “I mean that. We were a republic for hundreds of years. Elect a doge or whatever. The traditionalists can’t complain about that.”

“I would _love to_ ,” said the Prime Minister, “but I _do not have the votes_. And as long as Stefano remains a political force, I won’t, because he genuinely believes that he deserves to be in power one way or another. It would be easier to deal with if he was an idiot, but he’s not. He’s just an asshole. But – in the longer term – how much easier do you think that would be, with a monarch who agreed?”

“I don’t even know why I’m in this conversation.” Joe could feel himself bouncing his leg nervously, and forcibly stopped.

“Because I’m not unaware that your opinion matters,” the Prime Minister said, dryly. “I don’t know Prince Nicolò well, but I know he wouldn’t have got married on a whim.”

“Well…” Joe said.

“No!” Nicky protested. “I mean, in terms of – but _you_ are not a whim.”

“What about that whole not being able to inherit if you marry without permission?”

“That sort of thing,” said the Prime Minister, “requires the monarch to enact it, and Parliament to follow through. Which the monarch doesn’t want to do. There’s also an excellent legal argument that since your marriage isn’t legal here, the whole thing is moot.”

“You’re not really selling this,” Joe said, sourly. “Have Nicky move back to a country where we can’t even be married –”

“I could get it through Parliament if he was the heir.” That sparkle was back in her eye. “My word on it. And _then_ …”

“Tell me,” Nicky said. “How’s your partner these days? Quỳnh, do I remember it right?”

“Fiancee,” said the Prime Minister. “For obvious reasons the engagement is dragging on. We can’t just pop up to the Netherlands or wherever and get married while I’m Prime Minister. Imagine how that would look.”

“I can recommend that, actually,” Nicky said, the corner of his mouth curling up.

“As tempting as the prospect of participating in an actual gay conspiracy is,” said Joe, “you’re still asking Nicky to give up his entire life for this.”

“I’m not doing that,” said the Prime Minister. “His parents did that to him, by having him.”

“How does that poem go,” Joe said, and slipped into English. “ _They fuck you up, your mum and dad._ ”

“We’ll think about it,” Nicky said, “alright?”

Joe stared at him, speechless.

*

He had to hold it back in the car, because twenty-four hours had not accustomed him to having people listening to them nearly all the time. But as soon as they were back in Nicky’s apartment, Joe let loose.

“We’ll think about it?” He said, throwing up his hands, and not bothering to keep his voice down. “We’ll think about it!”

“I didn’t promise her anything!” Nicky said, in the way he did when they argued, giving no ground but not raising his voice. “But you heard everything she said.”

“How can I think about it when I don’t even know what it _means_ ,” Joe threw back. “What was that stuff about a title, for starters? Or – schedules! And – you know what, Nicky, I don’t care if you thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives in Amsterdam, this was going to happen _sometime_ and you could have warned me and you _didn’t_.” His voice started to go on the last sentence; he was close to tears. Fuck this. Fuck everything, actually.

“I know,” Nicky said, white-faced. “Can I – do you want a hug right now?”

“No,” Joe said, and went over and wrapped himself around Nicky. He tried to concentrate on how solid Nicky was, how present; how his broad hands spread over Joe’s shoulders; how he could see so clearly in his mind’s eye Nicky using those hands to cook or clean or heal. The idea of Nicky being reduced to an – an object, a figurehead, seemed almost obscene.

And yet clearly it wasn’t _only_ a figurehead role; there was real power here, and certainly wealth, which was the same thing, just slipperier to define. You couldn’t say Nicky would be giving things up. Except in all the ways he would be. When Joe tried to think about _himself_ , what it would mean, what he’d gleaned from talking to Nicky’s siblings and their spouses…his head hurt. It was so completely separate from anything he’d envisioned his life being.

Then again, when he’d been twelve, telling rich people how much their paintings were worth hadn’t exactly been his life goal, either. He did that because it let him live, and he drew because that made it _worth_ living. They weren’t the same thing, and…they wouldn’t be the same thing here, either.

“Alright?” Nicky said quietly, in his ear. Joe realised he’d stopped shaking.

“For the moment,” he said. He kissed the curve of Nicky’s neck before stepping back. “What happens now?”

“I think what happens now is I’m going to have to sit in a lot of meetings,” Nicky said, “and you…I’m not sure. There will be – you’re going to have to decide if you’re okay to be seen in public. With me.”

Joe raised his eyebrows. “We’re in public together _all the time_ , we have done some very memorable things technically in public –”

“With me being Prince Nicolò. It’s different. You know it is.”

Joe breathed in, and out. “Is it okay if I’m still deciding?”

“Yes,” Nicky said, gripping him by the elbows.

“You still haven’t answered my question about the title thing, by the way.”

“Oh, uh.” Nicky flicked his thumb against his fingers, a sure-fire sign he was being cagey. “It’s only that – because I didn’t ask about marrying you at _all_ , you’re in a sort of…weird place. If my father officially says no, then nothing changes; like Hannah is still Dr Levi, even though she’s married to Marco. But if it was approved, and if we…then probably you’d be Prince Yusuf; like my mother is Princess Maria. That’s what the Prime Minister meant. And if we were going to stay, actually, I would insist on it.”

Joe could feel his whole face scrunching up. “I…don’t even know how to feel about that.”

“It’s sort of like being someone else,” Nicky said, very seriously. “A whole different person, with a different name. From who you are inside yourself.”

“This is, wow,” Joe said. “Still…a lot.”

“I had an idea,” Nicky said, diplomatically changing the topic. “They’ve closed down the public tours because of – because we’re in mourning…that still feels so odd to say…do you want me to see if someone could show you around the palace?”

“Sure, why not,” said Joe. “Something to do.”

*

‘Someone’ turned out to be Nicky’s brother-in-law Matthieu, who was similarly at loose ends; Hannah came along as well because she’d never had the full tour.

“I’ve only visited once,” she told Joe. “So this is all still pretty new for me too.”

Joe had been through palaces before, doing tourist stuff, but this was a long way from a French chateau. Hannah was interested in what the rooms were used for, what made them different from each other; Matthieu wasn’t much help on that score, being the sort of person who was cheerfully uninterested in details. Joe couldn’t help looking at the art, of course, and it turned into an impromptu art tour as well. That was fun, and also momentarily awkward when Joe identified what was _almost certainly_ a fake Botticelli.

“Oh, shit, you mean it?” Hannah said, covering her mouth with her hand. Her eyes gave away her laughter. Matthieu just laughed out loud.

“Well, don’t quote me,” Joe said, “but I authenticated this painting for a client in France, so either I’m very bad at my job, or…”

“Maybe that’s why they weren’t going to donate it to the museum,” Matthieu suggested.

“I wish they had,” Joe said. “That would have been a very exciting time for me and Nile.” Then he had to explain why he’d been in Genoa at all.

“Let’s see if we can find anything else fake,” Hannah said with enthusiasm, and Joe identified one other dubious painting and some probably less antique than it looked furniture in one of the dining rooms. It was a lot more fun than he’d expected to have.

“I don’t really do furniture, but my colleague does,” he admitted – Booker was the one who’d taught him what to look for, with modern fakes, it was all about the staining. Then he realised he hadn’t checked his phone for ages; there was a voicemail and two texts from Nile, telling him that she was leaving today. The job had been postponed until a better time. He made his apologies to Hannah and Matthieu and went to call her.

“So you’re – staying?” Nile asked. “For how long?”

“Until…at least until the funeral,” Joe told her.

“Is that what you _want_ to do?”

“I can’t leave Nicky here. His brother just died.”

“There’s worse places to be than a palace, I guess.”

“Can’t complain, that’s true,” Joe said, and hoped Nile bought it.

Nile did not buy it.

“Well, you need to be rescued, you let me know,” she said. “I’ll hop on the train back. I mean it.”

“Relax. I can walk out of here any time I like.”

They made their farewells and Joe wondered what it said about him that he was thinking of the palace that his husband’s family lived in as somewhere he needed to be able to walk out of. That he was a realist, probably.

After all – if there was nothing to worry about, with him and Nicky coming here…Nicky wouldn’t have concealed the truth from him.

That theory got substantial supporting evidence when Joe and Nicky were summoned – well, asked, but Joe was pretty sure it counted as a summons – to have dinner with Nicky’s parents.

Nicky’s mother asked Joe questions about his job, and his family. She appeared to have actually gone and looked up his mother’s political career, or more likely had someone do it for her. But Joe was going to count that as making an effort. Nicky’s father was nearly silent through much of the meal.

“This burrida is very good,” Joe said at one point, in an effort to hold up his end of the conversation without just answering questions about himself all evening. “I think I’ve only had it once, but I don’t remember where.”

“In Malta,” Nicky says. “At that restaurant in Valletta.”

“When did you have time to be in Malta? I thought your work didn’t let you get away,” his father said, pointedly.

“Four years ago, when I met Joe the first time. And a couple of months ago, for our honeymoon.”

“There was a _first_ time? You never mentioned that.”

“What would have been the point?” Nicky said. “You wouldn’t have wanted to know. That was when you were still trying to introduce me to suitable girls.”

Nicky’s father pressed his lips into a very thin line. “There were at least two of them you liked.”

“Liking people is not the same thing as wanting to marry them.”

“How _did_ you meet?” Nicky’s mother interjected, speaking to Joe. “The first time.” She sounded genuinely curious.

“I was sketching in a park,” Joe said. “And Nicky thought I was sketching him –”

“You were!”

“Not your face, I wasn’t. So he came over to complain, and I showed him, and we ended up talking, and then we ended up getting dinner, and…” The rest of that story wasn’t fit for parental ears; Joe covered it with a shrug and “We were both there for a couple of weeks, and by ourselves, so we spent a lot of it together.”

“I thought you knew who I was,” Nicky said, ruefully. “That’s why I was upset about the sketch. I never got to tell you that before.”

“Oh, huh. _Huh_.” That made things clear to Joe that had been – for the last four years – extremely opaque. “I thought you were just…”

“Being difficult on purpose, to a complete stranger?”

“It wouldn’t be out of character,” Nicky’s father said; Joe hadn’t been expecting him to speak.

“Nicky’s never difficult,” Joe said. “He just always knows what he’s doing, and doesn’t like to be dissuaded from it.”

“And you really didn’t know who he was?” Nicky’s father asked Joe, openly sceptical.

“Not a clue in the world. He didn’t even give me a surname, that time. Not until he ran into me in Amsterdam.”

“Well, then I knew it was destiny,” Nicky said, something he had voiced before, and Joe winked at him.

“I want to see this sketch,” Nicky’s mother said.

“It’s in one of my old sketchbooks back in Amsterdam,” Joe told her.

“Here.” Nicky pulled out his phone. “I’ve got a picture of it.”

“Since when?”

“Since then,” Nicky said, his mouth curving smugly, and Joe loved him so much.

He didn’t need to see the phone to know the sketch, because it was engraved in his mind; a view of the Fort St Angelo, across the Grand Harbour, and a figure leaning on the wall of the park. Joe had been thinking about re-doing it in watercolor, maybe as an anniversary present for Nicky. That had totally gone out of his mind this last week, with – everything.

Nicky’s father held his hand out for the phone, and surveyed the photo critically. “This isn’t bad.”

“Thank you,” Joe said, even though that was barely a compliment.

“He means it’s very good,” said Nicky’s mother, with some humour. “But you don’t work as an artist?”

“I work on art all the time,” Joe said. “But it’s hard to make it pay the rent, unless you’re very lucky. Being good doesn’t even come into it after a certain point. So I look at other people’s art for that, and I make my own art on my own time.”

“Ah, yes,” Nicky’s mother said, in the faintly embarrassed way the very rich did when they were reminded that most people had to make decisions about what they did based on whether it let them live. It wasn’t the first time Joe had heard or answered that question, or heard that sort of response.

“That went very well,” Nicky said, later, when they were in bed.

“I’m glad you think so.” Joe nuzzled against the back of his neck. “It just felt normally meeting the parents awkward to me.”

“That _is_ going very well, under the circumstances.”

Nicky went quiet for a while. Joe had started to drift off before he spoke again.

“The thing I hate,” he murmured into the darkness, “is that now I have to wonder if they’re making an effort because of the circumstances, or if they always would have, and if I could have…”

“I can’t answer that for you, love.” Joe held him tighter. “I wish I could.”

Privately he thought that Nicky’s instincts probably hadn’t been wrong, before this week: but it wouldn’t help to say it.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Nicky said finally. “As long as they’re willing to do it now they are given the chance.”

*

The funeral was now one day away. There was a big discussion about whether to mention Joe in the press statement that would go out this afternoon about the arrangements, or not. Nicky fought vehemently for _not_ , because it would be a ‘distraction’, he said. But Joe knew he meant that it would put pressure on Joe, and he didn’t want that. And on himself; but Joe was absolutely certain Nicky wasn’t thinking about that at all.

He won that argument. However, it wasn’t the last one. One of his father’s staffers – her title was something about PR, which sent a chill down Joe’s spine – showed up, blonde and coiffed, to frown and Joe and say that she was here to make sure he was properly turned out for tomorrow.

“Joe is a lot better at dressing than I am,” Nicky said, eyeing the flunky with suspicion. She hadn’t bothered to introduce herself by name to Joe or anything plebeian like that, so Joe was going to think of her as ‘the flunky’ until further notice. “What on earth could you need to fix? He has a suit, it’s been sent out for tailoring, what else is there?”

“If we could just do something about the hair,” she began. Joe took two steps back out of pure instinct, and glared at her. 

Nicky’s eyes narrowed, and he drew himself up to his full height in a way that Joe had only ever seen him do the one time some asshole had tried to hassle them about holding hands. Suddenly Joe wasn’t looking at Nicky; he was looking at Prince Nicolò. “No. This is not up for discussion.” 

“Also,” Joe said, to put himself back into this conversation that was nominally about him, “do you have any idea how much work it takes to keep it looking this good? Huh?” The flunky looked blank. “No, I didn’t think so.”

“This is an _extremely_ public event,” the flunky said, disapprovingly. “You will be representing the royal family, and I don’t know if you realise –”

“If this is how you speak to my family normally,” Nicky said, every word icy, “I find myself _very_ surprised you are still employed here.”

That apparently got the message through: she scuttled away.

“On the one hand, that was kind of dickish,” Joe said, once she was gone, “on the other hand, it was kind of hot.”

Nicky gave him an incredulous look and Joe grinned lazily at him, all teeth; it felt better to focus on than what had just happened. “If it helps, or it probably doesn’t, I meant every word of it. If they want me to stay here and we agree, then that means you stay, and if you stay here then we can argue about the propriety of monarchy but I am not going to let anybody speak to you with a _fraction_ less than the respect they give to any of my siblings’ other spouses. She would not speak like that to Daniela, and she isn’t officially a member of the family.”

“I don’t want people to be rude,” Joe said, thinking it through, “but I don’t want them to be polite to me because I’m married to you and nothing else.”

“That’s going to be a fine line to walk sometimes,” Nicky said. “I’m sorry, but it is.”

“I…am getting that.” Joe shook his head. “We should, uh…”

“We should go and make sure your suit is ready,” Nicky said. “And that we know all the places we are supposed to be, and when.”

“I feel like we’re not going to be allowed to be anywhere else.”

“We’re not,” Nicky acknowledged, “but it’s always nicer if it’s not a surprise.”

*

The funeral itself was mostly – Joe felt bad about this, but it was true – _extremely boring_. Nicky and his family had to walk from the palace to the cathedral. Joe and Hannah and Matthieu, and Matthieu and Giovanna’s two boys, got to sit in a very slowly-moving car instead.

“I thought you were walking,” Hannah said blandly to Matthieu.

“We decided it was too hard on the boys,” he said.

“So you’re in the naughty seat with us.”

“It makes everything equal,” Matthieu said, shrugging, and Joe suddenly felt a lot worse about writing the guy off as dumb. Hannah asked Joe if he’d ever been to a Catholic funeral, and he said no, he hadn’t; neither had she.

“It feels weird having it five days later,” he said, and Hannah agreed, and then they spent the rest of the car ride explaining to the kids about how in their religions you had the funeral right away, which was at least something to do. They were attentive and asked all sorts of sideways questions, in the way that only kids could. Then they moved on to the question of Aunt Hannah’s baby and when it would be born and what it would be named, which took care of the rest of the trip.

“We’re almost at the church, boys,” Matthieu said. “Quiet now.”

They went quiet, in an almost preternatural way. Joe guessed they’d had to learn that.

The mass didn’t actually go on forever; it only felt like that because Joe wasn’t used to it. That was what he told himself. He’d sat through longer sermons at the masjid, surely.

Nicky held his hand very tightly, and didn’t cry. Joe, finally, after five days, wondered what his brother had been like, whether he would have been someone Joe could have liked, the way he suspected he could like Nicky’s other siblings. He was never going to know now.

He knew that they were being looked at. There were other people here Joe recognised from news articles, heads of state, other royalty; it gave the whole thing a surreal air, like a kind of dream. Joe couldn’t really be in the same place as all those people. He tried not to spend too much time studying the cathedral’s statuary and stained glass, which was genuinely lovely. Differences about appropriate artistic subjects aside, Joe felt nobody could fairly fault Catholic decorative taste, at least when it wasn’t over-ornate. This cathedral hit the right balance, as far as Joe was concerned.

They were in the second row, and Joe was sitting right behind Princess Giulia, Nicky’s niece. Joe didn’t spend that much time around teenagers these days, because his sisters were older than that now, and she looked shockingly young, face round with baby fat. He thought about putting her in nominal charge of a country. It was barely comprehensible. 

Then there was the burial – it was a beautiful sunny day and _hot_ , and they were all sweating in their dark clothes, which made Joe long for proper white funeral wear – and then a reception. They got an hour in between to change and try and cool off.

“Just stick with me,” Nicky said. “I’ll introduce you to people worth talking to. Which is less than half of them.”

“I’m surprised it’s that many.”

“They’re not all terrible. Just – a very particular crowd.” Nicky looked at his phone like he’d just remembered something. “I forgot – did you talk to your family yet?”

“No,” Joe said. “Should I have?”

“Well, you’ll be in the local news, though nobody will have your name yet,” Nicky said, “and then…you probably should.”

“What do I tell them?”

Nicky spread his hands. “They’re your family. Tell them whatever you like.”

He hadn’t cried again, and was wearily calm. Joe was irrationally annoyed with him for suggesting this _now_ , but really annoyed with himself because he should have called them yesterday and he hadn’t; he’d been avoiding it.

He sent a short message, put his phone in his pocket, and followed Nicky to the reception. That was somehow easier, because he could slip into professional mode: he knew what he was there to do, which was to support Nicky, and he knew why he was there, and almost everybody else there was too well-trained at being in public to express outward surprise or confusion.

It still retained that deeply surreal air, because of who was there. Joe had to forcibly switch off the part of his brain that tried to connect people to things he’d read or seen in the media, and try and just take them for who they were, standing in front of him, as people. The thing about royalty and politicians, Joe noted, was that most of them actually looked very ordinary: well-dressed, but ordinary. They weren’t like actors, who had won – if you could call it winning – some weird genetic lottery. Anyway, it helped. Maybe.

The _most_ surreal bit was definitely meeting the King of his own country, who had apparently heard he was here with Nicky and _wanted to meet him,_ and talk about how he’d got engaged to his own wife. There had been some controversy around it at the time because she had been a foreigner as well as not noble; Joe hadn’t paid any attention, and definitely hadn’t ever imagined it paralleling _his_ life in any way. It really drove home how arbitrary this all felt for Joe. He’d met someone, and fallen in love with him, and got married, and suddenly that qualified him to be in this room?

“You handled that really well,” Nicky said to him once it was finally over.

Joe was too tired to really appreciate it. “I’m here for you. I don’t care about any of the rest of it.”

“I know, but I also know how much I’m asking.”

Joe nodded. They leaned into each other wearily for a long minute.

When he checked it again, Joe’s phone held a barrage of messages from his parents and sisters that he couldn’t really answer, or not easily.

 _It’s all been very sudden_ , he sent back.

 _We are going to call you tonight_ , his mother messaged, and it wasn’t a question. He showed Nicky.

“Do you need me there?”

“You should be with your family,” Joe said. Nicky didn’t disagree, but he slipped into the room right as Joe was waiting for the video call to connect.

“Aren’t you supposed to be –”

“We’ll go back afterwards,” Nicky said. “Right now everybody’s just getting drunk, except Hannah because she can’t, and I made a bet with Marco about how long it’s going to take before our father starts complaining that he lost his only child who really understood family duty.”

“Is he going to?”

“Eighty percent chance, at least,” Nicky said. “Which will be very unfair on Giovanna, who’s never done anything he didn’t want her to, except the PhD.”

That was when Joe’s parents showed up on screen, followed quickly by Noor, by herself, and then Amina.

“Hey,” Joe said. “So, uh, how’s it going?”

“Yusuf, what is going _on_ ,” his father said, and Joe opened his mouth to reply but then Nicky got into camera-shot and Amina actually _shrieked_.

“Nicky! Is it true?”

“I’m afraid so,” Nicky said.

“You know what?” Joe looked at him. “I’m going to let him do the explaining, because it’s his fault.”

“Hello, Dr diGenova,” Joe’s mother said, very pointedly.

“That’s still my name as well.” Nicky sounded a bit defensive about it, and fair enough. “But…”

“ _Prince_ _Nicolò_ ,” crooned Amina, starry-eyed. She hadn’t been _nearly_ this impressed by Nicky at the wedding.

Noor rolled her eyes. “Does that mean you’re a prince too, Joe?”

“It’s – complicated?” Joe said, and poked Nicky so that he’d start talking. To his credit, he did, and didn’t leave anything important out, except the whole political…situation…but Joe got the sense that that wasn’t public knowledge, exactly.

“Well, why not,” said Joe’s dad, at the end of it. “I’m sure our Yusuf is good enough to be a prince.”

“I certainly think so,” said Nicky. “But you and I have talked about the whole question of princes, and nothing I said then is untrue.”

“The context certainly makes a difference,” Joe’s dad said, dryly.

“When was that?” Joe asked Nicky.

“At the wedding,” Nicky said. “We were discussing political philosophy. It was fun.”

“I remember that,” Noor said. “It was _not_ fun. At your own wedding!”

“Philosophy is all very well,” said Joe’s mother. “But what are you going to _do_? Are you going to just stay there, in Genoa?”

“That’s – still being decided,” Joe said. “It – we’re not going to jump into anything.”

“Stay in touch,” she instructed. “No more surprises.”

“No more surprises,” Joe promised.

*

There was another reception next day for a wider range of local dignitaries and nobility who didn’t quite qualify for the heads-of-state one. Joe was starting to feel exhausted by this and it wasn’t even his brother who had died. A very understated press statement also went out – Nicky and Joe were told about this, and approved it. Or rather, the annoying blonde press flunky asked Nicky for his permission and Nicky looked at Joe and Joe said _yes._

Because what he said to Nicky two days ago was right: this was always going to come out, somehow, somewhen. Right now they had a degree of control, and Nicky’s brother’s totally unexpected death was overshadowing them. For now.

So it was out there, on official palace letterhead, a list of the royal family who had gathered for the Crown Prince’s funeral, including Prince Nicolò and his husband, Mr Yusuf al-Kaysani. Joe felt very, very weird when he looked at the copy that got forwarded to Nicky’s official email account, which Joe hadn’t even know he _had_ until this week. It looked like it was talking about a different person. Different people. It couldn’t be _them_.

He told Hannah about it in a quiet corner of the reception. She was resting her feet; Marco was somewhere doing whatever princes did at these things, mostly nodding and listening from what Joe could tell, and Joe had volunteered to fetch her a glass of water.

“Don’t look at the media for the next week,” she said at once. “Or the internet. At all. That was my mistake.” She eyed him kindly, but knowingly. “It might even be worse for you. Although even odds; nobody’s going to claim you’re really a lizard.”

“I wouldn’t put it past some parts of Reddit,” Joe said.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” Hannah said, “but I’m almost looking forward to being the _second_ most scandalous member of this family. I’m not very good at being scandalous.”

“Oh, come on,” said Joe. “Where’s your ambition?”

She laughed. “Now you mention it…” she lowered her voice. “It’s neither of us really, even if you stay; Bernadetta and Daniela met in a _convent_. But they’re not official, so nobody outside the family knows that one.”

After a few minutes Joe forced himself to stand up and go find Nicky. He felt a little more settled into his skin than he had been the day before; he could be outside himself enough to observe, here, the difference in Nicky’s – he didn’t know how to classify it. Not behaviour, exactly. But in the way he carried himself.

The closest thing to it he’d ever seen, in the last six months of their relationship, was when a man had come up to Nicky in a café. Nicky had had a moment of sheer panic – Joe knew why, now – before settling into a different self as the man had pulled up his coat sleeve to reveal a cast and thanked Nicky for the treatment he’d given him. It had very obviously been Nicky’s work self, reassuring, kind, entirely confident. Joe had told Nicky afterwards that he thought Nicky must be amazing with patients, and Nicky had said “Do you mean you think I _wasn’t_ , up until now?” and Joe had pointed out that he had a sample size of one, in which case Nicky had also been the cause of the injury, which didn’t count. Then, he’d thought that would be the most differently he’d ever see Nicky.

Now – at a distance of a few metres – he could see that when Nicky was being Prince Nicolò, it had a lot in common with when he was being a doctor. The confidence and reassurance was the same. But there was an element of distance to it, too. He really wasn’t the same person as either Nicky, in private, or Dr diGenova. Joe thought he could draw it. He wasn’t sure he had the right words for it yet.

He might have said something like it to Nicky, at some point, but he got intercepted by the Prime Minister and an East Asian woman who she introduced as her partner, Quỳnh Ngo.

“It’s so interesting to meet you,” said Quỳnh.

“It’s, uh, been an interesting week,” Joe said politely. “Do you have to come to these things often?”

“Only when Andy makes me.” The Prime Minister rolled her eyes.

“Did I hear correctly that you are an art authenticator?” Quỳnh continued.

They made small-talk for five minutes about Joe’s work, which was actually – kind of a relief; Joe knew how to do that. Half-way through Nicky found them, and handed Joe a glass of wine; then took off again, apparently after a signal from his mother. Joe wasn’t a big drinker because he’d started too late to really learn to like the taste, but under the circumstances, he was allowing himself one.

“Oooh, someone’s being naughty,” said a voice off to Joe’s left. It was a short, weaselly-looking white guy who wore his suit _incredibly_ badly. Joe didn’t like to be too judgmental about that kind of thing, because clothes meant different things to different people, but the comparison to everybody else here was stark. Also, he’d just started out with a micro-aggression, so Joe didn’t have to be kind to him and wasn’t going to be.

“Stefano,” the Prime Minister said, very flatly. “What an unpleasant surprise.”

“I just wanted to meet Prince Nicolò’s surprising husband,” said Stefano, who must be the one everybody _didn’t_ want to take the throne after Nicky’s father. Joe was already starting to see why. “I can see at once why he might want to give up the throne for this.”

“He’s not _giving up_ anything,” Joe said, biting off the _asshole_ at the end of the sentence, knowing it was visible in his eyes.

“Marrying a starving artist for love, when he could have had a principality,” Stefano went on, like Joe hadn’t spoken. “It’s like a fairytale, isn’t it?”

Joe decided to just ignore the _starving artist_ line because nobody had ever got anywhere by protesting that they were actually boringly bourgeoisie, but he’d barely got his mouth open before the Prime Minister cut in. “You know, Stefano, both the Prince and I are agreed that Nicolò is still _going_ to have a principality. Unless you’re willing to talk terms on clearing the way for Princess Giulia? Since you’re such a modern thinker.”

Stefano drew himself up. “While I am _fully_ in support of women’s rights, _obviously,_ I just think this is a very bad time to change our constitution, when we’re all staggering under the weight of such a sudden loss to our country. Of course, Andromache, if you want to negotiate, my office door is always open.”

“You’ve voted against the last three bills that affect women’s rights,” Quỳnh said idly, examining her nails. When she looked up, snakes had nothing on her gaze.

Stefano tsked. “I can’t be expected to support terrible legislation because of emotive campaigns.”

“Because giving women domestic violence leave is so terrible?”

“For our economy, yes.”

“Is the Prince expected to have an opinion on legislation?” Joe asked the Prime Minister, an honest question, because he genuinely couldn’t make out what weight that would hold.

“Everybody has opinions,” she said, mildly. “Of course, all of it has to be passed by Parliament.”

“But some opinions carry more weight than others, especially when their permission is required to enact,” said Quỳnh.

Stefano smirked, like a shark. “Which is why I’m sure Prince Nicolò isn’t interested in the throne; he certainly isn’t qualified to have those opinions, with the life he’s lead so far.”

Joe let out an incredulous bark of laughter. “Seriously? You should be going down on your _knees_ to get Nicolò to stay. You don’t deserve him.”

The Prime Minister gave him a very flat look; Quỳnh smothered a smirk. Stefano whirled on him, puffed up like an outraged pigeon. “He wasn’t even the _spare_ , let alone the heir, until this week. Aside from his dubious marriage decisions, what has he ever done that would make him a good monarch?”

“He’s a _very_ good doctor,” Joe said. “He comes home exhausted because he’s done everything he can to save someone’s life. He deals with people at the lowest point and he does it with grace and good humour and kindness, every time. He does it when he could have spent the last decade or so swanning around a palace being more or less useless. He chose to do good instead. You think it’s a _fairytale_ , you think he’s _escaping_? He takes more responsibility for helping people on himself than anybody ever dreamed he would have to. _You_ couldn’t do what he does. He’s kind and he’s thoughtful and he puts other people first and you think he couldn’t do the job? Hah.”

“Personally, I think I –” Stefano started, but Joe cut him off.

“Oh, because you think you’re smart? Sure, whatever.” Joe eyed him with contempt. “You’re very pathetic.”

He stalked off to find Nicky, abruptly done with the whole conversation. Whispers trailed after him. Joe, profoundly, did not care. He found Nicky with his mother, talking to yet another person Joe didn’t recognise.

“Excuse me,” Nicky said, as soon as he met Joe’s gaze. “I’m afraid I’m needed.”

He magically got them out of the ballroom, or whatever the room was – Matthieu had told him on the tour, a few days ago, but Joe was stressed and tired and losing details. “They’ll cope without us. Joe, are you alright?”

“It’s just been…a lot of new people to keep track of,” Joe said.

“Come with me,” Nicky said, taking him by the hand, and took him around and down and back up and up and out onto a tiny balcony that was tucked in between two rising parts of the roof. There was no furniture, only bare stone. It overlooked the city, and the sea.

“I used to come here when I was sick of my family,” Nicky said. “I imagined myself running away to sea.”

“How’d that work out for you?”

“We spent three weeks on a yacht when I was fifteen, and it turns out I get terribly seasick. But it was a good dream.”

“I’m going to tell you something that won’t be so good,” Joe said, sitting himself down next to Nicky on the bare, sun-warm stone, getting dust all over their good suits. Not that it mattered for Nicky, who probably had an endless supply. “I think maybe you _should_ do it.”

“What?” Nicky jerked in surprise. “You’ve changed your mind?”

“I think you should do it,” Joe repeated. “Be the heir. That Stefano…he’s _awful_. And your father was going to retire. And maybe you can change things, and if not – you can abdicate too, can’t you?”

“I thought you couldn’t wait to get away from here,” Nicky said, sounding lost. “I thought we just had to get through.”

“You want to go, we’ll go,” Joe said. “But I thought you should know. You’d be good at it. It’s a stupid job for anybody to be good at, but you would.”

“Thank you,” Nicky said, and moved closer so he could put his arm around Joe. After a minute he leaned his head on Joe’s shoulder. Joe kissed his forehead, and they watched the ships coming and going until it got dark.

*

They didn’t see any of Nicky’s family until the next day, when Nicky got summoned to a meeting with his father – and it was definitely a summons – and Joe was told that Princess Maria wanted to speak with him. That was Nicky’s mother.

“Divide and conquer,” Nicky murmured. He squeezed Joe’s hand hard before he left.

Joe was led to a small and tastefully-decorated sitting room which was clearly personal, as much as anything in this palace was personal. He thought, based on the tour – but still wasn’t _totally_ sure – that this was Nicky’s parents’ apartment, the rooms they actually lived in. They hadn’t dined in here, the other night.

Nicky’s mother was dressed in a pale green knee-length dress that brought out the green in her eyes, which were the same shifting pale colour as her youngest son’s, although Nicky had his father’s face in every other respect. A staffer that Joe thought he recognised poured their tea. At this point Joe was desperate to know any of their names – well, not the terrible PR woman who’d insulted his hair – and didn’t know how to ask. He’d have to ask Nicky. So many things he didn’t know.

“I thought,” Nicky’s mother said, “it was time that we talked about what _I_ do, here. Since, if my husband has his way and Nicolò concedes for once in his life, it’s what you will face.” She looked him up and down. “I will admit, and please do not take this the wrong way, that you’re not who I was expecting, as the next – hmm. I don’t think anybody’s even considered what to call a male consort, since it’s never arisen.”

“Nicky concedes things all the time,” said Joe. “If they’re presented reasonably, and don’t involve changing the channel when there’s a cooking show on.” He won an amused noise. “But, and please do not take this the wrong way,” he deliberately echoed her phrasing, “I am not going to sit here to be talked at as if I am something you have to put up with, someone out of place. If I’m not what you were expecting, that’s a lack of imagination on your part, not a failing on mine. And I trust my husband enough to know he isn’t going to stay here for that, either.”

As Joe had spoken, Nicky’s mother had developed high spots of colour on her cheeks; when he finished, she opened her mouth and said “Obviously I didn’t mean that –”

Some reservoir of good sense halted her; she never finished the sentence. She picked up her cup, and sipped. Joe caught the twitch of her fingers at the clearly unusual-to-her flavour; it was mint tea, he could smell it. He did appreciate that grace note.

“But it isn’t obvious, is it,” she said finally, after Joe let the silence linger. “I apologise for that. This has been – a very trying time, but that’s no excuse.”

“Nobody is at their best after losing someone,” Joe conceded. There was no reason not to, and every reason to allow her a gracious retreat. “And you don’t get to do it privately, or on your own terms.”

“Parents aren’t meant to outlive their children.” There was, for a second, a moment of real and raw grief there. Joe felt constantly tossed back and forth by the circumstances they all found themselves in.

“No they’re not,” he agreed, and looked to the window while she composed herself.

“You’d be doing us a favour, you know,” she said, and Joe looked back at her, genuinely surprised. “Don’t think we’re not aware of that. Well.” She sighed. “That I’m not aware of it. My husband has some very strong opinions about duty. But that relies on all his children agreeing what their duty _is_. What I know is that Nicolò won’t stay if it isn’t something you’re happy with, and that he holds the promises he’s made to you, and his profession, higher than the ones he hasn’t yet made to his country.”

“Yes he does.” Joe thought about the conversation they’d had last night, and held his tongue, because at the end of the day it was Nicky’s decision, and he wasn’t letting them think he was on any side but Nicky’s. No matter how much of a dick Stefano had turned out to be. “You know what really surprises me about you saying that? I’ve been waiting for you to ask what it would take to make me go away.”

Nicky’s mother actually rolled her eyes. “We know our own son. He wouldn’t be married to someone who would agree to that, and in the unlikely event you did, he’d go after you.” She shrugged. “Also, forgive me for being blunt, nothing about your circumstances or life suggest you could be bribed like that. I don’t know if Nicky truly thinks we didn’t know anything about your marriage, but…we hadn’t thrown him out. He left. We knew where he was, and what he was doing, and of course we knew about you, after he filed the paperwork for the marriage. That sort of thing isn’t very subtle.”

Joe stiffened. “The job –”

She waved a hand. “No, that was a coincidence, although it was brought to our attention once the contracts were being drawn up. If nothing untoward had happened, I might…I might have asked to speak to you, when it was done. Whether I would have said anything…I don’t know. We were waiting for Nico to come to us, when he was ready. He would have had to come back for the abdication and coronation, next year. The surprise for us was that you truly _didn’t_ know.” 

Joe hauled his jaw shut again; he absolutely hadn’t been expecting that. They’d _known_? All along? Nicky’s mother had been thinking about telling him, behind Nicky’s back? “He does really think you didn’t know, I’m pretty sure. No, I am sure.”

“He wanted to believe it,” Nicky’s mother said sagely, for a second – despite all their differences – reminding Joe of his own mother.

“Were you really waiting, or were you – coming to terms?” Joe asked, because he had to.

She made an un-ladylike face. “ _I_ was waiting.”

“I see.” Well, that explained quite a lot about how well, considering, they’d handled this week. Joe had been expecting worse and he still didn’t think he’d been wrong to. “You said you were going to talk about what _you_ do. Is that still on the table?”

“Is there any point to it?” She eyed him directly. “I won’t waste either of our time.”

Joe took a deep breath. “Still up in the air.”

“Well, then.” She put down her cup, and picked up – it had been hidden by a couch cushion – a tablet. “Let’s talk.”

*

“What did my mother have to say?” Nicky asked Joe, over lunch. Joe wasn’t going to lie: it was weirdly easy to become accustomed to the minute details of your life being organized for you. Long-term, he thought, they were going to have to work on that: Nicky got grumpy when he didn’t get to cook. And then he contemplated the fact that he was thinking about _long-term_.

“No, you first,” Joe said. “What did your father want?”

“To confess to me about the abdication plan. It’s not anything Andy didn’t tell us. He said he was willing to push it back six months. I said two years. There might be a compromise somewhere between.” Nicky sighed. “He’s got so _old_ and I don’t like it.”

“It happens,” said Joe, who had been resolutely refusing to notice the encroaching grey in his father’s hair and beard for a solid fifteen years now. “But you didn’t tell him no, again.”

“I didn’t,” Nicky said, slowly. “Your turn.”

“Your mother wanted me to know what she does,” Joe said. “Or really I think she wanted to see how I reacted to her telling me what she does. If you want to know what she thought, you’ll have to ask her.”

“I will.” Nicky raised an eyebrow. “And what did you think?”

Joe leaned back in his chair. “I think…this is a better deal for me than you in some ways.”

Nicky made an interrogative noise. _Go on_.

Joe shrugged. “I don’t like my job that much, existentially, sometimes. Which you know. It’s telling rich people how much money they have. Sometimes they like the art as art, but mostly they don’t. And if we did…this…” He waved a hand. “I could curate what you have here. I could do my _own_ art, and not have to choose between that and paying rent – not that we’re in danger of being out on the street, but…I’d say, you know what I mean, except you don’t.” Nicky made a rueful gesture of acknowledgement at that. “It’s not that there aren’t duties, or restrictions, or any of that. I got that message. It’s that, fundamentally, it’s still a hell of a lot easier.”

“I hadn’t thought it through like that,” Nicky admitted. “That’s…something to think about.”

“I guess so,” Joe said cautiously, but Nicky didn’t push the topic any further.

*

They got another request from the Prime Minister’s office for the following day, but this time Nicky narrowed his eyes and said that he thought it would be best if the Prime Minister came to the palace, and – somehow, out of their sight – it was made to happen.

“What’s that about?” Joe wanted to know.

“We went to her last time,” Nicky said. “If we take this seriously, there’s a balance to these things.”

“What happened to ‘fuck it, let’s just have a republic again’?”

“Because on the other hand, if I am not _taken_ seriously, it doesn’t matter what my opinion is on that. And I don’t get taken seriously if I don’t take it seriously. So.”

“Is this what your father wanted to talk to you about?”

“My father is under the misconception that refusing to participate in something is the same thing as not understanding it.”

“As opposed to refusing _because_ you understand it.”

Nicky dropped his hand – he’d been rubbing his forehead – and gave Joe a delighted smile, one of the ones that showed mostly in his eyes. “Yes, exactly.”

“Give me another month and I’ll understand how this whole thing works,” Joe said, more to encourage Nicky than because he believed it; another few years, more likely.

“Then you’ll be doing better than me, and I grew up here,” Nicky said.

The Prime Minister wanted to tell them that she’d been asked to put through, as quickly as possible, the legislation which would enact the new order of succession.

“Which is you, your highness,” she nodded to Nicky, “and then several of your third cousins who’ve never set foot in Genoa, so if you could avoid getting hit by any stray buses anytime soon, I think we’d all appreciate it.”

“Stefano’s out because he’s in your Parliament?” asked Joe, making sure he understood.

“Yes – that should have been done after he was elected, but at the time it didn’t seem like a priority. He’s going to be mad about it for a few weeks,” said the Prime Minister, “and then he’s going to convince himself that being elected demonstrates that he’s much better suited to be in charge of things than anybody else he’s related to, and who knows – if you work on him the right way he might even be in favour of a republic. If he thinks he could get himself put in charge of it.”

“I’m not sure whether that’s good new or bad news,” Nicky said, as he put down the copy of the legislation she’d brought.

“It’s just news.” The Prime Minister shrugged. “Actually it’s just my opinion, right now. We’ll see how it goes.”

“Do you know how Marco feels about this?” Joe asked Nicky, tapping the document. Marco and Hannah had left for New York this morning. Hannah and Matthieu and Joe had set up a Signal chat, for the three of them. Joe was feeling better knowing that he had people he could message who were in the same place he was with all this, more or less.

“Marrying Hannah was the _only_ thing he ever did that our father didn’t want him to do, in his entire life,” Nicky said, “and I’m still surprised he went through with it. He wasn’t going to argue about this.”

“I didn’t ask what he was going to _do_ , I asked how he _felt_ about it.”

Nicky appeared to consider this. “I think…relieved, mostly. But it isn’t uncomplicated for any of us. It was never going to be.”

“Not that your family dynamics aren’t _un_ related to this discussion,” said the Prime Minister, “but what I actually need is to know that you’re ready for this to go to Parliament.”

“Are you asking if my father made this request without being sure of my agreement?” Nicky raised his eyebrows.

“I have, you know, worked with your father for several years,” the Prime Minister said, very mildly.

“It’s alright.” Nicky had been leaning forward, elbows on his knees; he sat back up. “Yes.”

He didn’t look at Joe when he said it; Joe wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“I’m also putting the marriage equality legislation back on the agenda,” she went on. “I don’t need nor am I asking your permission for it, but it will attract attention, so this is your advance warning.”

“Does that have to happen this quickly?” Joe asked.

“I have the numbers now, and if that doesn’t happen, a bunch of the formalities get complicated. Which, I have received the message, would not be welcome.”

“She means that we can’t make you a prince if you’re not married to me _here_.” Nicky’s eyes gleamed dangerously. “And I told my father, that wasn’t one of the things up for debate.”

“A lot of people are going to have opinions about this,” Joe said, because that was, if anything, understating things.

“It’s the right thing to do.” _Now_ Nicky looked at him properly; hopeful, only a fraction uncertain.

“Yes it is,” Joe agreed. Nicky nodded. The Prime Minister sat back in her chair with a small, satisfied smile.

“Now, I won’t take any more of your time, I think someone was going to come and talk to you about the press release,” she said.

Joe put his head in his hands for just a second.

“Joe?” Nicky said, immediately.

“Just contemplating how this is all going to go,” Joe said, faintly, then picked his head up, and stood.

*

They were getting very close now to the point where Joe thought he might be able to get home for a few days. On the other hand, he’d had to turn off his mobile phone, after the press release went out. Someone had found it, or given it out, or who even knew, and he was getting fucking _interview requests_. He didn’t personally think the affairs of a small European monarchy were that interesting.

But apparently this was the very first time there’d been the question of a same-sex marriage in the immediate line of succession in any monarchy, let alone an interfaith one, and people were going _nuts_ about it. It ranged from measured, but alienating when you were the subject, to just…terrible. Nile had texted him a couple of the best (worst) quotes – the funny-worst ones, not the awful-worst ones. Matthieu had sent a couple of choice quotes from a very bad tabloid article alleging that Marco had been ‘pushed aside’, which had resulted in a GIF war in the spouses’ Signal chat. Both those things helped. But either way, Joe couldn’t use his phone right now.

Nicky said something to someone and another mobile phone appeared for Joe, same model, new number. Joe called his family again, and asked them to ignore the coverage, too.

“Don’t worry, I have it handled,” his mother said briskly; she had had her share of outraged media reports when she’d been in politics, Joe knew. “I’ve contacted the public relations people for Nicky’s family, so we can discuss the strategy for us. It’s being taken care of.”

“Oh, uh, right,” said Joe, who hadn’t even considered that might be something that needed to happen. “I’m sorry to be so much trouble.”

“You never do it on purpose,” his mother said. “So we forgive you. Just tell Nicky we’re holding him responsible for looking after you. It’s the least he can do, after dragging you into all this unprepared.”

“I will,” Joe said, around a lump in his throat. He’d had to lock his social media, too. He knew that it couldn’t really be personal, any longer. At least nobody had found his old DeviantArt account. Yet. That was a problem for another day.

The other side of that coin was that when it was a problem for another day, he wouldn’t be dealing with it by himself; it wasn’t about him, anymore, as an everyday person. It was about the him who was going to be a prince. Alright, fine, there was a little bit of the fairytale in this whole business. He was being transformed, whether he wanted to be or not.

Joe felt like he’d made his peace with that, or at least started to, but that night, he was woken up by Nicky not being in the bed. At first Joe thought he’d just got up to use the toilet or something, but he didn’t come back, and didn’t come back, and eventually Joe sat up to see him lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He wasn’t asleep.

“Hey,” Joe said. “Something keeping you up?

“Everything,” Nicky said. “I don’t – _are_ we doing the right thing? I can’t tell anymore.”

Joe yawned, and blinked hard to make himself focus, and swung his legs over the side of the bed, so he was sitting up. “This isn’t like you. You make a decision, you stick to it. What’s the problem now?”

“It’s not about me.” Nicky sat up. “It’s about you. Because you’re right, everything you have said to me, over all the time we’ve been here. If it were just me, I’d stick it out, for all the reasons the Prime Minister gave. But what it will do to you – that gives me nightmares, Joe. And so does the thought of you leaving. Not now. But in two years, or five, if this isn’t something you can live with. I heard you talking to your family again. It goes beyond you, too.”

“It gives me nightmares too.” Joe stood up and walked to the window; it overlooked the ocean. They hadn’t had this conversation, really, had they? They’d talked around it and about it. “But there’s really only two options, aren’t there? You go or you stay. So if you want to go – say the word. Let’s go.”

Nicky blinked at him, like this had never occurred. “Just…go?”

“Sure.” Joe shrugged. “Nobody’s keeping us here. I figured out a couple of back routes, from the one day I got to do my actual job. Just…grab whatever we need, walk out. Leave. Sort out everything else once we’re back in Amsterdam. I shave, you wear what you normally wear, we’d get away with it. I don’t know what we’d do after that, now things are in motion. But – we could.”

Nicky tilted his head, thinking. “I think you’re right. We could do it.”

“Or,” Joe said, taking a deep breath, “or you stay. And you do this. You keep negotiating whatever that means for you, with your family, and figuring out how to be Prince Nicolò the heir. But you can’t keep going in circles like this.”

Nicky looked to the door, and back and Joe, and said, slowly, “I…have already made up my mind, haven’t I?”

“Yeah. Or you’d have been gone ages ago. You’d have dragged me out the door. I _know_ you, Nicky.”

“Nobody here calls me Nicky.” His voice had gone quiet. “Only you will.”

Joe held his breath. Nicky walked over and got down on one knee in front of Joe, the way he never had the first time.

“Joe,” he said, taking his hand, so that their wedding rings were touching. “I’ve never asked properly, and I should have. I know this isn’t how you saw our lives going. But will you stay with me, here, as my husband? Knowing what that means?”

For just a second, Joe could see it clearly: the life where he shook his head and walked out, said _fuck it_ to the whole thing, the good bits and the bad, and everything was still difficult for a while but eventually it went away, and he went back to his friends and his family and his job. He’d survived losing Nicky once before; he’d survive it again.

But he didn’t want to.

This other life Nicky was offering him – well, Joe wasn’t sure about almost anything in it, but he was sure that Nicky would be on his team, completely, nothing held back. Because he’d _seen_ that, this whole last ten days. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was going to be possible.

And he’d made up his mind too, hadn’t he? When he’d gone to the funeral, and when he’d talked to Nicky’s mother, and when he’d given a whole speech in public about how they didn’t deserve Nicky on the throne. It wasn’t that he couldn’t take any of it back. It was that, despite everything, he didn’t regret it.

“Joe,” Nicky said again, a little unsteadily.

“Love,” Joe said, getting down on his knees too, if only to save his neck, “you go or you stay, and you’re staying. I won’t say that I couldn’t live without you, because I did that already. But in my whole life, you’re the person I knew from the first instant I laid eyes on you, and every second I’ve spent with you has made that truer. I know you’re with me, every second, every step. This isn’t a fairytale and I don’t want it to be one. I just want you, with me, always.”

Nicky leaned in and whispered in Joe’s ear, a confession private even from the room around them, “I think I _want_ to stay, now. I didn’t think I could want that.”

“I know,” Joe said. “I know.”

*

They negotiated – it didn’t take that long, in the end – time, until the end of the year, to go back to Amsterdam and sort everything out. It wouldn’t be exactly like it had been, but it wouldn’t be exactly unlike. Joe had the world’s weirdest conversation with his boss, but he tried to strip away all the trappings and think of it as a conversation about his decision to move to his husband’s home country because of his husband’s family responsibilities. Which was a _perfectly normal_ thing to do. But he was going to have to develop a better response to the question about what people were supposed to call him now.

It was probably a toss-up whether Nicky was going to get to finish the year at the hospital, but he said with a quirk of his mouth that he’d buy some silly glasses and be Clark Kent, and when Joe considered how Nicky usually dressed when given the choice, there was every chance he’d get away with it. His professional role hadn’t yet been made public. There was some discussion of him finishing his training in Genoa. Joe wasn’t totally sure that would work out, but – there was some willingness to try.

Joe called Booker, the last person who he owed some sort of explanation to.

“Oh good, you’re alive,” Booker said. “I was starting to wonder. Nile filled me in a bit, but – what is going _on_ in your life?”

“I wish I knew,” Joe told him. “I had no idea. Well, alright, I knew there was something up, but I didn’t think it was _this_.”

“Who would. Fuck, it’s all ridiculous. Are we going to see you back here at all?”

“For a bit. But…we’re going to be moving.”

“No shit.” Booker’s voice softened. “Don’t be a stranger once you’re off being a prince.”

“Not gonna happen,” Joe said, but things were going to change, he knew. They couldn’t not. Fuck, it was all ridiculous. “Who else is going to be wrong about football at me?”

“Listen –” Booker said, and they talked shit about each others’ teams for a while, which was a good reminder that actually, not all that much had to change. The world was still spinning the same way it had.

The other good reminder of that was when Joe was woken up, their last morning in Genoa, by Nicky waving a mug of coffee under his nose. That ritual had gotten established early on in their marriage.

“Ugh,” Joe said, covering his face with a pillow. “Do I have to?”

“If you don’t, someone is going to try and pack your bag for you,” Nicky said. “Which I know you would hate.”

“You’re a bald-faced liar. You could just tell them to go away.”

“Yes, but I _won’t_ , so you’ll have to get up and do it.”

“I hate you. Give me that.”

Joe drank half the coffee, and then Nicky took the mug out of his hand and put it down, and kissed Joe’s coffee-flavoured mouth.

“I heard all about that speech you gave to Stefano, you know,” Nicky said when he pulled back. “And you were wrong. It’s not about me being deserved or undeserved. Nobody here deserves _you_.”

“But you do,” Joe said. “And you’re going to be here.”

“If I do, I’m going to work to keep it that way. Every day.”

They leaned in, foreheads together, and for the first time in weeks Joe felt completely at peace. It was going to be okay, maybe, this royalty thing.

“Come on,” Joe said. “Let’s go home, for a while.”

“I already am home,” said Nicky. “Home is where you are.”


	2. another way it could have gone...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several people (including my beta) wanted to know what would have happened if Joe had found out about Nicky's family another way, so: this is one possible way that conversation could have gone under different circumstances.

Joe’s two weeks in Genoa went almost exactly the way he’d predicted: lots of time in windowless rooms, lots of late nights writing up his notes before he forgot things, no revelations about Nicky’s family or whatever it was Nicky didn’t want him to know. The weather stayed good, not that it mattered much.

Nicky apologised again, on Joe’s second-to-last night, for the way he’d reacted to the news that Joe was going to Genoa for work.

“It’s very…” he sighed. “I will explain when you get back. I promise.”

“It’s okay,” Joe said, lying on his back on the hotel bed, holding his phone over his face. “I’m holding you to that, but you apologised already. We’re good.”

Nicky smiled a little crookedly. “We’ll…see what you say.”

“If you feel the need to make it up to me…” Joe drew the moment out. “Any good restaurant recommendations? Nile and I have both reverted to room service but we want to do better on our last night here.”

“Uh.” Nicky blinked at him, clearly caught off-guard. “Not – you know, for the last few years I was studying in – nothing is coming to mind.”

Joe bit the inside of his cheek, not smiling too hard; he bet that Nicky’s problem was that everywhere he could think of was too fancy. In Malta four years ago, and over the last six months in Amsterdam, Nicky had taken a weird glee in eating street food or in hole-in-the-wall places that shouted, louder than words, that he hadn’t got to do that in whatever his younger life had been. Sometimes Joe considered the possibility that Nicky had just been locked in a closet or something, but he was way too well-adjusted and good with people for that. So it had to be the other option.

“Never mind,” he said.

“I’m sure I can think of another way,” Nicky said, with a matter-of-fact confidence that shouldn’t objectively be sexy but, because it was Nicky, very much was.

So Joe went to sleep that night in a much better mood, and retained it all the way up until next afternoon. He and Nile were stripping off their gloves and stretching out their cramped backs, more or less done, when a palace staffer he didn’t recognise appeared in the doorway and said “Come this way, please; the Princess would like to speak with you.”

“Uh, wow,” Nile said, eyes wide. “Right now?”

“Not you,” the woman said. It was almost polite except around the eyes. Joe and Nile both bristled. “Just Mr al-Kaysani.”

“Nile’s done just as much of the work,” Joe said at once. “In fact, if the Princess wants to talk about –”

“It’s not about the paintings,” said the staffer. Joe decided he didn’t like her. “It’s a family matter.”

Nile turned to Joe, her eyes, if anything, even wider. “Joe, you know what’s going on?”

“Nope,” Joe said, shrugging, although he _had_ had a sudden idea involving Nicky and illegitimacy which was romance-novel-level silly. Part of him thought he should say _no_ , and give Nicky the chance to tell him whatever it was that he was probably going to learn: the other half was too curious. “Come and rescue me if I don’t text you in an hour or two?”

“You got it!” Nile said brightly, after a narrow-eyed beat. The staffer rolled her eyes, which told Joe that she didn’t know about Nile’s stint in the military; oh well, that was her problem.

Joe followed her upstairs and into what was clearly a personal part of the palace. It was very surreal. His job put him on the borders of this sort of thing quite often, but never directly into it like this. As he was shown into a room, he had a sudden flash of regret – maybe this was a bad idea – but it was too late.

The Princess was a white woman in her sixties, with pale eyes and pale hair that was not all grey, but getting there. Joe waited to follow her lead on how to greet her, and she hesitated visibly before nodding to him. He decided not to read anything into that. Yet.

“Your highness,” he said, painfully conscious that he hadn’t been given any pointers on etiquette. “I…was told you wanted to speak with me?”

“Please sit down, Mr al-Kaysani,” she said, gesturing to one of the couches, and Joe sat down and drank coffee with a princess, which was going to amuse his sisters, at least.

She asked him about the work he and Nile had been doing, and his job in general, and for a little while he entertained the idea that he was just an afternoon’s distraction for a woman who probably didn’t talk to anybody with a real job for more than a minute at a time, most days. Except that the staffer – who was still in the room, just lurking politely by the far window – had definitely said the word _family_.

“You grew up in the Netherlands, is that right?” the Princess said. “And your mother was in your Parliament, for a while.”

“That’s right,” Joe agreed. “I wasn’t born there, but all my sisters were. My mother was in Parliament while I was a teenager, but she’d had enough by the time I was at university.”

She nodded. “Being in the public eye has its toll.”

“Your highness,” Joe said, tired of circling things, “I don’t mean to be rude, but could you just…tell me what this is actually about?”

She paused, and put down her cup. “Your marriage, of course.”

“Yeah, uh, the thing is,” Joe said, feeling very guilty now because Nicky had promised – but also Nicky had had _six months_ to tell him whatever it was. “I know Nicky –”

“Nicky?” she said, a little incredulously.

“My husband, Nicky. Nicolò. I know he’s from Genoa and I know there’s something he’s not telling me about his family, because he hasn’t told me _anything_ about his family except that his brother lives in New York, but whatever it is, I think you know and I don’t. So – if you want to talk about it, you’re going to have to tell me.”

The Princess put her face in her hands and for a solid fifteen seconds Joe thought he’d made her cry, which had _not_ been what he’d intended. He glanced at the staffer but she was looking determinedly out the window; Joe was on his own. He’d already opened his mouth when he realised she was, in fact, laughing.

“This is,” she said finally, lowering her hands and sitting upright again, “ _not_ the conversation I was expecting to have.”

“Well, me either,” Joe said, having nothing else left.

“Let’s start again.” She smiled a quiet little smile that hit Joe between the eyebrows like a freight train, because he knew that smile very well. “Yusuf. Do you go by Yusuf?”

“Joe, mostly,” Joe said, his mouth dry. He picked up his cup, for something to do with his hands that wasn’t obviously a nervous reaction.

“Joe,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to meet my newest son-in-law.”

“Son-in – are you _kidding_ ,” Joe said, his fingers losing their grip, and promptly spilled coffee all over a very expensive carpet.

*

Joe held it together through the rest of that highly surreal conversation, and all the way back to the hotel, where he told Nile he just wasn’t feeling like going out to eat, and even all the way back to Amsterdam. He could precisely identify the point where he lost it. It was the point where he walked in the door and put down his bag, and went into the kitchen, and Nicky looked up from where he was sitting at the kitchen table reading – it smelled like food was in the oven – and smiled at him, wide and warm and unabashedly pleased to see him.

“Joe! You’re back.” He closed the book.

“So,” Joe said, levelly, folding his arms. “Prince Nicolò.”

Nicky put his head in his hands in a way that was so exactly like his mother it made Joe’s eye twitch. “Oh no.”

“Oh, _yes_ ,” Joe said, leaning against the door. “I had a very informative conversation with your mother.”

“With my _mother_?” Nicky said, looking up in sheer panic. For Nicky, anyway. He wasn’t much of a panicker.

“Princess Maria,” Joe said. “Lives in this _palace_ , in Genoa, with her husband, who I haven’t yet had the privilege of meeting, if that makes you feel better –”

“I was going to explain,” Nicky said, very quickly.

Joe wanted to yell, and he wanted to turn around and walk out of the room, and he wanted to kiss his husband who he hadn’t seen for two weeks, and most of all he wanted to know how it was possible to be _this mad_ at someone and still love them. Maybe it was _only_ possible to be this mad at someone if you loved them. He was starting to suspect that was the case.

“Alright.” He unfolded his arms to gesture, one arm wide. “Go on, then. I’m listening.”

“Okay. So. _So,_ ” Nicky said. “The first thing is – wait, why were you even talking to my mother?”

“Because they’ve known you got married to me since it happened!”

Nicky winced. “Oh, _shit.”_

Joe sighed, and sat down at the table, leaning on his elbows. “I’m still listening.”

Nicky took his hand immediately. Joe narrowed his eyes. “That’s not going to help.”

“I haven’t seen you for two weeks,” said Nicky, and, fine, Joe was defenseless against that statement. “Alright. Where to begin?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to: xwingace for lightning-speed Dutchpicking and making sure I didn't lead readers astray, onyxbird for the line about fairytales, lazaefair for Nicky defending Joe's hair, star-anise for the concept of Joe and Nicky meeting and then re-meeting, and everybody who cheered me on. Team work makes the dream work.


End file.
